


i've got my love (to keep me warm)

by espressohno



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, First Time, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Humor, Idiots in Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Matchmaking, Meet-Cute, Mutual Pining, Oral Sex, Pining, Romantic Comedy, Stupidity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 17:40:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21632311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/espressohno/pseuds/espressohno
Summary: a short little collection of winter/holiday prompts! for my readers who i love so much.thank you all for making 2019 a great year and for making my return to archive so special!
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Comments: 206
Kudos: 167





	1. meet-cute in the snow / T

**Author's Note:**

> so here's the [post](https://espressohnos-blog.tumblr.com/post/189103119838/veronicabunchwrites-100-wintery-prompts-for-all) that i'm getting these prompts from. so many of these are goddamn hilarious i couldn't stop myself from turning it into a holiday writing challenge
> 
> TODAY'S PROMPT:  
>  _89\. I’m drunk and fall asleep in a snow bank and you’re the kind stranger yanking me to my feet and lecturing me on how dangerous that is_
> 
> read on for drunk Jim and sleep-deprived Leonard and a not-so-cute meet-cute

Jim was one of those people who was always warm. No matter the weather, no matter the setting on the air conditioner, no matter what he was wearing, he always got the same comments when people touched him--usually along the lines of  _ oh my god you’re so warm!!! _ and then, if he was lucky, it’d be followed by that person holding his hand or linking their arms together or leaning against his shoulder to borrow some of his warmth. Jim was always happy to share. 

The only downside, though, was that when he got drunk, he got  _ hot _ . And not in a sexy way. He’d sweat through t-shirts and have to step outside of bars and, on some occasions, freak out his sexual partners for feeling downright feverish. 

It was a sober blessing, and a drunk curse. 

But the silver lining was the awe-inspiring sensation of stepping outside of a bar or club in the wintertime and feeling the cold, sharp air against his red face. It was like he was a kid again, like those afternoons in the summertime when the sun felt closer to the Earth than usual and he’d come out from playing all day, sweat darkening his blond hair, and open the freezer door and feel the icy air against his face for however long it took before his mom yelled at him to  _ shut the damn door before you let all the cold air out _ . 

Actually, it felt exactly like one of those afternoons this time, because he was hot and sweaty and savoring the cold winter air and also, someone, somewhere, was shouting at him. 

Jim couldn’t see the guy since he was--well--he was laying down in the snow, to be exact. Feeling the snow against the back of his neck and the cold seeping through his jeans and looking up at the clear dark sky, the far-away stars, the little clouds that formed above his face every time he exhaled. 

He was in someone’s driveway, the only one on the block that hadn’t been shoveled free of snow. 

Come to think of it, the owner of this driveway was probably the same person who was shouting at him right now. 

“ _ Did you hear me?? I said what the fuck are you doing!? Get out of the snow you moron! _ ”

Jim was pretty drunk. It took so long for him to find his voice that the owner of the driveway finally stomped up to him, and seeing his face interrupted Jim’s train of thought all over again. Because he was hot. In the sexy way. Hot and in his pajamas with a parka thrown on top and glaring down at Jim underneath his very impressive (and somehow also hot) bed-head. 

He raised his eyebrows expectantly. Jim somehow managed to speak. 

“Relax, I’m not gonna break into your house,” Jim slurred, because he couldn’t think of any other reason this guy would come barging out of bed after seeing Jim in his driveway. Clearly he was here to shoo Jim away. Jim let his eyes fall closed. “I’m just gonna take a nap and then I’ll leave. I promise.”

“Like hell you will. You’re gonna catch goddamn hypothermia is what you’re gonna do. Get up before your blood freezes inside your veins.”

“Can it do that?”

“Do you really wanna stay here and find out? Is that what you wanna do?”

Jim blinked his eyes open, looking at the wide black sky, and then in the upper right corner of his vision where the angry stranger was still standing over him. He looked like he was about two seconds away from kicking Jim down his driveway and into the street. Somehow Jim was too drunk to interpret this as a signal to leave. 

“I mean…” he started, “if it’s for science--”

“ _ Jesus christ, _ ” the man gritted out, and all of a sudden Jim was being hoisted up out of the snow like he weighed nothing at all. It hardly even felt like he was using his feet to walk and then they were at the top of the driveway, the front door, the hallway, and--holy fuck had this stranger just carried Jim  _ inside his house? _

Actually, two things happened when Jim got drunk: he got incredibly, unbearably hot, and he stopped experiencing time in a linear fashion. It wasn’t that he blacked out, exactly, it was more like the clock kept jumping forward in 10 or 20 or 30 minute chunks. 

The next time he had something of a conscious thought he looked down and realized that his clothes were not his clothes and the blanket wrapped around his shoulders wasn’t his either. Oh, and this definitely wasn’t his house. Because Jim didn’t have a house, he had a shitty apartment, and said shitty apartment did  _ not _ have a fireplace, and even if it  _ did _ he wouldn’t even use it,  _ and-- _

“Drink this.”

Okay, Jim was starting to piece together what was going on. _ Maybe. _ At least, he had an idea. 

“Are you going to murder me?” he asked, and the stranger (the same one who had pulled Jim out of the snow 10 or 20 or 30 minutes ago) snorted into his own mug.

“Yes,” he deadpanned. “It’s poison. I saved you from freezing to death because I wanted to poison you instead.”

Jim looked down at the mug that had been shoved into his hands. It looked like tea. He carefully took a sip. 

It was tea. 

Jim had been on this earth for 26 years, and had been drinking alcohol for at least 10 of them--maybe more--and somehow this had to be the  _ weirdest _ place he’d ended up drunk in. Some stranger’s cologne-and-laundry scented apartment, on a fancy couch, wrapped in blankets, in front of a fireplace, and now: tea. 

Also, this guy looked way too comfortable with the fact that Jim was on his couch. That part kind of trumped everything else on the weirdness scale. 

“Wanna tell me why you were drunk on my driveway?”

Jim took a slow breath, steadying himself. His vision was starting to clear up, at least. 

“I was on my way home but I was tired and your driveway was calling to me.”

“Uh huh,” he replied, absolutely unconvinced. 

“The real question.” Jim said, “is why you’re the only person on this street whose driveway is full of snow.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“I wouldn’t have laid down on your driveway if you shoveled it.”

“God, you sound like my ex-wife,” he groaned, but Jim could see him smiling even as he dragged a hand down his face. And then he tried to smooth his hair back, which did absolutely nothing except force Jim to notice the warm, flickering light from the fireplace across the side of his face, making him look very stoic and handsome and a little less like the crazy sleep-deprived man who had hauled him out of the snow. 

Jim decided that maybe there was a better alternative to post-club snow-naps, and it was...whatever the hell  _ this _ is. 

“I work at a hospital, you know,” he said next, and Jim thought  _ how the hell was I supposed to know that _ . “I’m a doctor. I don’t have time to shovel my goddamn driveway.”

“You’re a doctor,” Jim repeated quietly. “You really could murder me.”

“You think I would have taken the time to get your drunk ass into dry clothes first?”

“Maybe,” Jim whispered, staring wide-eyed at the fireplace, “maybe that’s part of your process. Maybe you’ve done this before.” He took a sip of his tea. He could see the guy rolling his eyes and shaking his head out of the corner of his eye.

“What’s your name?” Jim asked. 

“Leonard McCoy,” he said. Jim turned his head to look over at him on the other end of the couch and he was leaning back against the cushions, propping his head up with one hand. Jim was sobering up a little bit by now, and he was warm in a good way and the room smelled like burning wood and he wanted to know everything about Leonard McCoy.

“Leonard McCoy,” Jim said, feeling the shape of the name in his mouth. It felt kind of nice. “I’m Jim. I didn’t wake you up, did I?”

“No.” Leonard smiled lazily, a little bit resigned to his own insomnia. “I just had a 48-hour shift.”

“Yikes.”

“I know. Somehow I can never fucking sleep after I get off. I think my body is just like,  _ oh, are we gonna operate on no sleep now? okay _ , and then I spend the entire damn night awake.”

Jim blinked at him. He couldn’t remember the last time he struggled to fall asleep. His body pretty much took whatever chance it got to get extra sleep, hence his ability to nap in a pile of snow just because it was a horizontal surface and he had closed his eyes for long enough. 

“I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

“I don’t know why you brought me inside at all,” Jim said, and took another sip of his tea. 

“Because I’d rather have you in my house than dead on my driveway in the morning. You know how much bureaucracy is involved in finding a dead body on your property? The paperwork I’d have to fill out because of you?”

“Wow. You really are a Good Samaritan. Saving my life just to avoid paperwork.”

Leonard snorted. 

“Plus I figured you were too cute to die in such an idiotic way,” he mumbled into his mug. But Jim heard it. 

“You think I’m cute?” he asked, in a completely loud and not-at-all suave or even  _ remotely _ flirtatious way. He sounded as if nobody had ever given him a compliment before. Leonard just rolled his eyes again, leaning back to finish the rest of his tea. Jim’s eyes caught onto the motion of Leonard’s adam’s apple as he swallowed, the five-o-clock (more like, post-48-hour-shift) shadow on his face and neck. He wondered if he missed the part where they started flirting. But then again, if Leonard had thought he was cute since he first saw him in the driveway, maybe this whole thing had been flirting all along. 

“Did I just make it weird,” Leonard asked when he caught Jim openly staring at him.

“I think it was weird from the beginning.”

Leonard set his empty mug down on the coffee table, and Jim mirrored him, and then a few seconds passed with nothing but silence and anticipation and a few feet of couch between the two of them. Leonard looked like he was studying Jim, even with how covered he was in blankets and soft, well-worn sweats. He’d probably gotten an eyeful, already, actually, even though Jim couldn’t remember the part where Leonard had changed him out of his wet clothes. Maybe he was looking at Jim right now and remembering that exact event. 

“Are you warm enough, yet?” he asked. 

Jim was stupid enough to take a nap in the snow in the dead of winter, but he at least knew what  _ that _ question meant. He shrugged the blanket off of his shoulders and slid to the other side of the couch.

Leonard had apparently been waiting for this part, because he pulled Jim the rest of the way into his lap, looking up at him in the dim, orange light of the fireplace. 

To be honest, Jim  _ was _ warm enough. He didn’t know if he’d ever felt warmer. But he lied. 

“Not yet,” he said. 

Leonard’s mouth curled into a sort of knowing smile, and he pulled Jim forward with a finger hooked under his chin, and kissed him.


	2. sending holiday cards as best friends / T

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so i hate that i took so long to post the second chapter but just LOOK at this prompt and tell me you don't want 6k words of it. at a certain point i had to just cut myself off because this fic was getting too long
> 
> _37\. you jokingly suggest we send out holiday cards together as friends so we do, and now everyone is congratulating us for finally getting together_

To be fair, the decision, and the plan, and the execution of the plan, all took place while Jim and Bones were still drunk, having stumbled back to their apartment from a very booze-filled thanksgiving at Hikaru and Ben’s house. Jim’s mouth still tasted like cider and he threw himself onto the couch and continued the conversation they were having earlier that night in Hikaru’s living room. 

Conversation was a little generous. He just wanted to keep whining about how he was single and he would always be single and he’d never get to take corny holiday portraits (like the ones Ben had shown them a preview of before they sent out all their holiday greeting cards, of him and Hikaru and the baby wearing matching sweaters in front of the Golden Gate Bridge). Bones had scoffed and said something about  _ not missing that shit at all _ but Jim was full of wine and hors d’oeuvres and he immediately started longing for a spouse and matching sweaters and good god, maybe even a  _ baby _ , too. 

“What happened to Jim Kirk the master of flirting? You just wanna get married now and throw that all away?”

The two of them always took turns on who got the role of sad-drunk and who got the role of mother-hen-drunk. Tonight was apparently Jim’s turn to be sad drunk. He shifted on the couch, trying to get comfortable. Suddenly a blanket was spread on top of him. 

“Thanks,” he said. Bones settled into the couch cushions next to him and started shimmying a pillow under his head. Jim continued his rant, “I was never a master of flirting. You know that.”

Bones snorted. 

“I do. I’ve witnessed it.”

“So what if I’m not supposed to be single my whole life anyway?? What if I would be better at long-term love??”

“Are we still talking about holiday cards?”

“Yes. No. Yes. It’s all related, I think.”

“Okay.” Bones breathed out a laugh. Jim turned his head on the pillow so he could see. Even though he loved his grumpy best friend, it was good to see him smiling too. Especially now while he was feeling sentimental about everything. 

He lifted his head and picked up the pillow just so he could relocate on top of Bones’ lap. 

“Did you and Jocelyn ever send out cards?”

Bones took a deep breath and dragged a hand down his face. 

“Uhhhh...yeah, actually. A couple times.”

“You hated it didn’t you.”

“Nah, it was tolerable. All you have to do is pose for like twenty minutes until you get a picture that doesn’t suck, and then you give it to someone else to do all the work. We don’t even have to go to Walgreens, these days, there’s all these websites for it now.”

“Hmmm.”

Bones’ arm settled around Jim’s torso, probably because he was tired of keeping it propped up along the back of the couch. Or maybe because Jim was being emotional. Either way it felt good. Bones was always way better at taking care of Jim than the other way around. 

“We did them even when we were still dating, now that I think about it.”

“That’s allowed?”

“Yeah--shit, I mean-- _ we _ could send out holiday cards if you want.”

Jim’s eyes, which had been steadily falling closed over the last few minutes, shot open again. 

“What, as friends?”

“Yeah. Everyone knows we’re both single. It’d be kinda funny, actually.”

Jim thought about it. Bones was right, the two of them had been single for a while. And living in this apartment together for even longer--shit, _ had it been four years already? _

Especially compared to the Sulu family cards which would be arriving in the mail too, a cheesy holiday card of the two indefinite bachelors in their friend group could actually be hilarious. They might have to do some explaining over the phone with relatives, but there was no  _ rule _ against sending out holiday cards with your best friend, now was there. 

Jim felt himself starting to smile, and apparently it was big enough that Bones mirrored him, leaning down from above. 

“Can we take them in front of the tree?”

Bones rolled his eyes. 

“We  _ better _ . Since you put that damn thing up already and it’s not even December.”

-

The cards were surprisingly easy to make, and probably would have been easier if they’d been sober. They didn’t have matching sweaters, or even holiday sweaters, so the most festive thing Jim could find while digging through Bones’ closet was a red flannel, and then, a little further back, a green one. 

That would do. Bones put on a very good show of pretending to hate it even as he willingly obeyed Jim’s order to put on the red one.

And then all they had to do was turn on the Christmas tree lights, prop the camera up on a stack of books, set it to self timer, and smile. 

Okay, that part was probably the most complicated. Somehow they managed to stay up until five in the morning taking photo after photo, and then when they were both too tired to keep their backs straight and their eyes open, Jim figured that at least one of them  _ had _ to be good, and they called it a day. 

Jim padded into Bones’ room to return the flannel after brushing his teeth, only to find him  _ still  _ awake, sitting up in bed looking at the photos on the camera’s little preview screen. He was glaring down at it, but that didn’t necessarily mean they were all bad. Bones glared at plenty of things. Jim tossed the green flannel in the direction of Bones’ closet and walked over to the bed. 

“Scooch over, I wanna see.”

Bones made room for him on the bed and Jim climbed under the covers. 

The photos were fucking amazing. At least, still-tipsy Jim thought they were fucking amazing. They were definitely sending out cards in the morning. And maybe printing some out, too, because there was one outtake where the timer went off while Jim and Bones were arguing about who should be kneeling and who should be sitting and it was such a perfect snapshot of their relationship that Jim  _ needed _ to put it in a frame. 

-

Sober Jim, who woke up a couple hours later in Bones’ bed after he’d already left for a shift at the hospital (and already made a pot of coffee in the kitchen, from the smell of it), took a look at the photos again and agreed. He spent his lunch break on one of those greeting-card-maker websites that Bones was talking about, sending previews of different designs to Bones even though he knew he wouldn’t get a response for a few hours. 

Luckily, Bones sent in his input before Jim left the office, prefaced by  _ I can’t believe you still want to do this _ and then,  _ the fifth one is the best because we look the most sober and it was after I fixed your hair. _ Jim ordered them. The euphoria of online shopping made him completely forget the actual, depressing reason they’d done this in the first place. 

-

Jim didn’t even realize how late it was (and how long he’d been sitting there putting holiday cards into envelopes and writing addresses and licking stamps) until Bones came home, and he remembered that Bones’ shift today ended at midnight. 

“Honey I’m home,” Bones called out from the doorway, with a complete and utter lack of enthusiasm in his voice. And maybe a little bit of despair in there, too. Jim was trying to concentrate on keeping his handwriting legible as he copied Nyota’s address from his address book. Even though she lived, oh, about two streets away from him and Bones. Finally he heard Bones’ shoes hit the floor, and his footsteps get lighter when he made his way into the kitchen. Jim was sitting at the kitchen table drowning in cards and envelopes--and a depressingly large pile of rejected envelopes because he’d spelled something wrong. He looked up and was comforted to see that Bones looked like he was equally drowning in his post-hospital fatigue. 

“Honey, I think we have too many friends,” Jim said. 

Bones snorted and sat heavily into the chair across from him, letting out a long exhale as he leaned his head back and stretched his legs across the floor. One of his feet bumped against Jim’s calf and he nudged Bones back in response. 

“You’re the one that wanted to do cards.”

“ _ You’re _ the one who gave me the idea, smart guy.”

Bones laughed, for real this time. It always pulled on Jim’s heartstrings to see him laugh after a long shift, because it never used to happen when they first moved in together. But now he tipped his head back and dragged a hand down his face and over his smiling mouth.

“We’re really having the authentic holiday greeting card experience now that we’ve started arguing over it.”

That made Jim laugh, too. He finished writing Nyota’s address and slid their cheesy-as-hell card inside and went about licking both envelope and stamp. The tastes of which would probably be imprinted into his mouth after this for years to come. He and Bones made eye contact over the envelope as he begrudgingly swiped his tongue across the adhesive strip and Bones quirked his eyebrows up, still smiling. 

Jim rolled his eyes and put the envelope in the SEND pile. 

“You think Ben and Hikaru are fighting over their cards right now?”

“Nah, neither of them are half as stubborn as you are. I think I picked the wrong guy to move in with.”

Jim gave Bones a flat look. 

“I’m putting you on stamp duty, just for that.”

-

Once they were all mailed, the whole joint-holiday-card thing effectively shifted to the back of Jim’s mind. Other things had to take precedence, like work, and plane tickets, and Christmas shopping, and trying to get Bones to agree to bring back some of his mom’s chocolate pinwheel cookies from Atlanta since they weren’t spending Christmas together like they had last year. 

(It took a lot of convincing. Jim may or may not have made certain promises pertaining to housework which his future self would resent him for.)

He went to Riverside, this year, because it had been awhile since he’d been home. 

So there he was, standing in the living room of his mom’s house, and looking at the greeting cards on display on top of the fireplace, and he saw his and Bones’ joint card. 

God, Bones was right. It was a good picture, and Jim’s hair looked good, and both of them looked sober--arguably. It made Jim smile, at first, to see his online-holiday-card creation with the very stereotypical _ Seasons Greetings! _ across the top in a curly gold font. And then the irony of the card beneath it--Jim and Bones were just roommates. 

Albeit long-term, best-friend roommates, but still, they weren’t a real couple compared to all of the other holiday cards full of smiling faces and matching outfits. Jim looked at all those family pictures, heard the sounds of his mom and Sam and Aurelan and the twins coming from the kitchen, remembered Hikaru and Ben’s card which had arrived in the mail right before he left, and it all got depressing again. 

He only enjoyed a few minutes of brooding on his indefinite singleness before Sam showed up in the living room with two mugs. Jim didn’t like that look on his face. That “it is Christmas and I have two six year olds and I’m offering you an unknown beverage” look. Jim turned away from the fireplace and reached for one anyway. 

“Do I wanna know what’s in this?”

Sam rolled his eyes and Jim saw the skin of his face starting to wrinkle when he spoke now, and was forced to face the fact, for like the five-hundredth time since he got here, that Sam was an adult, and he was an adult, and they were both adults. It was even weirder to accept in the context of their childhood home. 

“Relax,” he said, “it’s just regular hot chocolate. The boys made it.”

“Oh, that’s comforting.”

_ Regular _ hot chocolate turned out to be more or less accurate. The only real giveaway that it was created by six-year-olds was the mountain of mini-marshmallows on top. Jim picked them out with his fingers and ate them and considered putting a fire in the fireplace so the two of them had more to look at than greeting cards (and a better reason for hiding out in here instead of joining the kitchen action).

He still found himself looking at the card he and Bones made, as if the pictures weren’t already imprinted into his mind by now, and apparently Sam was too, because he asked, 

“Why didn’t you bring him?”

“Who--oh, Bones? I guess I could have. I didn’t really think about it. He always goes to Atlanta.”

Sam nodded and took a sip of his hot chocolate.

“You two met already. When you came to visit me, remember?”

“Yeah, two summers ago. San Francisco with four year olds. How could I forget,” he said flatly, as if he hadn’t had the time of his life at the San Francisco Children’s Museum. Which he definitely did--and Jim had photo proof. 

And Sam and Bones had met during that trip, on Sam’s request, because apparently Jim talked about him a lot. They got along well, which came as no surprise, and Bones turned out to be incredible with kids, which Jim  _ still _ couldn’t quite wrap his head around. 

“He’s really good for you, you know,” Sam said, out of nowhere. 

“Was I doing  _ that _ bad before I met him?”

Sam drank more hot chocolate instead of answering. Which was, in itself, and answer. 

“For your information, I’ve been told by multiple people, including his mom, that _ I’m _ really good for him. So there.”

“Sure, I believe it,” Sam said. He gestured to the card. “So how did this finally end up happening between you two?”

Jim looked at the card and smiled. He wasn’t going to give the legitimate answer, which was that he was loudly whining about being single after Thanksgiving dinner. 

“I don’t know,” he started, “we’ve been friends for a long time, and we live together, and we’ve both been single for forever. We just thought it’d be funny.”

Sam gave him a flat look.

“That’s really romantic, Jim.”

“ _What?_ ”

“What?”

An alarm started going off in Jim’s head and suddenly he retroactively understood what Sam had actually been talking about for the past five minutes. His mouth couldn’t seem to keep up with his thoughts as he blurted out, 

“Wait--do you think--I mean--does it seem like--you really thought that we’re--”

“Don’t look at me like that!” Sam held up his free hand defensively, “You two have lived together for like four years, he’s literally the  _ only _ person you ever talk about, and then you sent out these cheesy-ass cards wearing matching outfits, was I supposed to NOT see it as proof that you two are finally dating?”

Jim felt his eyes go wide. His mouth may or may not have been hanging open. Finally he just said--all he  _ could _ say, really, was--

“Oh god.”

“What?”

“That’s really what it looks like, isn’t it.”

“Uh. Yeah. Mom agreed with me.”

“Oh  _ god _ ,” Jim moaned. He sat down on the couch in front of the fireplace and dropped his forehead into his free hand, looking down at the mini-marshmallows swirling around in his mug. 

“So…” Sam’s voice got at least ten degrees gentler. “You’re not in love with him, then?”

“I--” Jim paused. 

It felt wrong to say no. It felt wrong to even  _ think _ the word no. He lifted his head up, slowly, and saw Sam still standing by the fireplace, waiting for an answer, his eyebrows raised. 

Jim dropped his head back into his hand. 

“ _ Oh my god, _ ” he whispered, and then he seemed to forget how to breathe. 

Sam walked over to the couch and patted him on the back. 

“There there, baby brother,” he soothed, “there are worse ways to find out.”

“Oh my god.”

Jim wanted to throw his body off a fucking cliff. 

How long, exactly, had this been going on? How long had he been in love with his best friend? And how was he so incredibly stupid that it took someone else--who hardly even knew Bones--pointing it out, for Jim to realize something he already felt with his own stupid heart?

-

It didn’t end there. Jim’s phone and email were blowing up in the next few days with messages from at least half of the people in his contacts, even people who he didn’t remember giving his cellphone number to. All of the messages were along the same lines. 

_ “Just got your card! Adorable! Good for you two!” _

_ “Happy holidays! You two look great!” _

_ “So glad you finally got together! I called it! Merry Christmas!” _

_ “I knew you two were a couple! You look so good together!” _

There was even an email from Jim’s great aunt--who he spoke to maybe once a year and definitely not about his love life--which said:

_ “Congratulations on your engagement, James! He sure looks handsome!” _

Jim had fucked up, supremely. The messages only reminded him of the mess they’d created and yet he couldn’t stop reading them, couldn’t stop his face from turning red every time he thought about them. 

He had no idea what to do. Was he supposed to call Bones? Was he  _ allowed  _ to?

Bones hadn’t called him yet, although he would have by now, at the very least to complain about his airport experience like he routinely did every time he traveled. But he would have gotten to Atlanta three days ago, and still: nothing. Normally when one of both of them left town they’d be on the phone almost every day, for any length of time between ten minutes and two hours, because of what Nyota liked to call their  _ separation anxiety _ , and--

Jesus christ. 

No wonder everyone thought they were a couple. 

To be honest, Bones was more of a significant other than Jim had ever had. They cared for each other, and supported one another, and talked every day and hung out all the time and never got tired of it. Even when they were arguing, they still kind of got along. Even when Bones was mad at him he still made coffee in the morning and took the trash out and cleaned the shower drain, and even when Jim was frustrated with him he still asked what he needed from the grocery store and made sure Bones’ laundry got done when he was having a busy week and ordered for him when he showed up late to their almost-weekly Monday night dinners. 

Oh god, those dinners. They were dates. The whole waitstaff at the ramen place they usually went to probably thought so. 

So, in every way except physical, they were already together. But even the physical part was a gray area. Because Jim slept in Bones’ bed sometimes and Bones massaged that knot out of his shoulder from sitting at his desk all day and Jim would go into their shared bathroom to brush his teeth in the morning while Bones was in the shower and he didn’t even knock anymore. 

They didn’t have sex, though. And they didn’t kiss each other and Jim didn’t hold his hand over the table on Monday nights or while they walked home, he didn’t stop at crosswalks and rest his head against Bones’ shoulder just to feel Bones wrap and arm around his waist and pull him close. They didn’t do those things. But they could. 

The longer he spent thinking about it, the more it made sense in his mind. The more he wished that it wasn’t just a thought. 

He wondered what it would feel like, to walk down the street holding Bones’ hand. To show the whole world that this man was his. He thought about kissing Bones, and he could already imagine the way he’d probably smile and sigh quietly like he always did when he was relaxed and happy. Jim wanted to make him happy. 

He wanted to make Bones smile and laugh and sigh and he wanted to kiss Bones. 

For the first few days Jim systematically avoided letting his mind wander into thinking about sex, for his own emotional stability, really. But he only had so much willpower. 

And then he couldn’t sleep at night. 

Bones was right there.  _ Right there _ . All the time. In bed next to him. In the shower while he brushed his teeth. On the couch, with Jim’s head in his lap or their legs stacked on top of each other. Right next to him on the sidewalk, shoulder to shoulder when the streets were narrow. Pushing the cart for them at the grocery store or pressed against Jim’s back when the bus got crowded. How had Jim never thought about it before? About how easy it would be to close the (sometimes nonexistent) distance between them. 

To hold his hand. 

To kiss him. 

To press their bodies together, not because the sidewalk was narrow or the bus was crowded, but because it felt good. Because they liked each other. Because neither of them had gone on a date--or even tried to, or even talked about trying to--for almost a year now. Because their lives were just fine without that, with each other. 

-

Jim lost his self control completely at some point and then his fantasies pretty much ran wild for the remainder of his stay in Riverside. 

And then he was back in San Francisco, climbing the stairs to his apartment--to  _ their _ apartment, and he knew Bones was inside, and his key was in the door, and he had a horrifying realization. 

What if Bones didn’t  _ want _ him?

What if that was why they weren’t a couple already? 

And it got worse, because of course it did, because if Bones didn’t want him, and he’d just spent the last two weeks getting the kind of messages that Jim was getting, all those congratulations for their relationship, that would probably make everything awkward. Things could be awkward now. 

Jim’s blood ran cold. But his key was already in the door. Bones was inside. He didn’t really have the option of hiding from the possibility of rejection, anyway, because he had to come home at  _ some  _ point. 

He turned the key in the lock. 

He opened the door. 

“Honey, I’m home,” he said, completely strained, and he instantly regretted it when the very-new and very-present and definitely-because-of-that-holiday-card awkwardness between them filled the room like a smoke bomb. 

Bones was sprawled out on the couch with his e-reader. He immediately looked up at Jim with an almost unreadable expression. It sort of seemed like he hadn’t been expecting Jim, even though he knew his flight details because they were written on their joint calendar on the fridge--

Alright. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to Bones, either, that everyone thought they were a couple.  _ Honestly _ . 

Or that weird look on his face had something to do with spending the last two weeks explaining to his family and friends that they weren’t together. Jim wanted to crawl out of his skin at the thought. At everything. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt awkward with Bones. If that had ever even happened at all. 

He had to just get this over with. 

Except Bones was already opening his mouth. 

He made it one word into what was probably going to be a rejection before Jim hastily and nervously cut him off.

“I--”

“The cards were a bad idea,” Jim blurted out. Bones’ eyes widened even more. 

Jim had already fucked something up already, probably, so he attempted to save it in the only way he knew how: digging himself into an even deeper hole.

“I didn’t realize how it was going to come off to everyone else, okay I--I just thought it would be funny--I mean, I don’t even know why I’m apologizing when it was actually  _ your _ idea, technically--”

Bones sighed and rolled his eyes and stood up from the couch. Jim didn’t stop. 

“But anyway. Um. I’m sorry I made us do the card thing and now everyone is talking about the two of us as if we’re--even though we’re not--and I just wanted to say that--that you don’t have to say it. Or anything. About it. We can just--not talk about it.”

None of what Jim said seemed to make anything less awkward. It was possible that he’d actually just made things worse. And now Bones was standing right in front of him with his hands on his hips and his head tilted to the side like he was waiting for Jim to finish so he could tell him he was talking like a crazy person. 

“I mean--I don’t know what you were going to say. But you don’t need to say it. Is what I’m saying. We can just not say anything. About it.”

Bones nodded slowly. 

“So am I allowed to speak at all?” he finally asked.

“Yeah--sorry.”

“Before you cut me off with all that I was just gonna say that I brought you something,” Bones said casually. He gestured his head towards the kitchen. “It’s on the counter.”

“Oh.”

Jim remembered how to use his legs and made his way into the kitchen, sensing Bones following after him. As soon as he saw the familiar red-and-green cookie tin he completely forgot that he was supposed to be freaking out and immediately started grinning. He closed the distance between him and the counter and the cookie tin. 

There was a card taped to the lid that said  _ for Jim _ in curly handwriting, but Jim couldn’t stop himself long enough to read it, because there were  _ chocolate pinwheel cookies _ in there. He pulled back the wax paper and his mouth started watering at the sight of them, filling the tin all the way to the top. He grabbed one, raised it to his mouth, reverently, and took a bite. 

“You’re not even gonna read the card, first?”

Jim felt like his eyes were rolling back into his head as he took the first bite. God, these pinwheel cookies. When he tried them for the first time last year it was something of a religious experience. He had no idea how he’d survived without them until now. 

He just had to...take a second. And then he’d read the card. 

When he finally turned over his shoulder to look at Bones, he was leaning against the doorway with his arms crossed, shaking his head. 

“Let me live,” Jim said, taking another bite. 

“Those cookies were a favor.”

“They were a  _ gift _ ,” Jim argued with his mouth full, “from your  _ mom _ .”

Bones sighed, and pushed off of the doorway like he was going to go back to the couch. Suddenly Jim panicked, as if the distance between the kitchen and the couch was so far that he couldn’t bear to see Bones leave. Instead of shoving whatever-the-hell-that-was into the back of his mind, he followed the impulse for some reason. 

“Okay, okay, hold your horses,” he said, imitating Bones’ voice a little. 

He reached for the lid again and pulled the card off. Bones paused in the doorway, apparently satisfied. 

Bones’ mom was nice, if a little intimidating. She seemed to be the only person on Earth capable of out-sassing Bones, which should have come as no surprise, and she was also single-handedly running her neighborhood’s rumor mill and had an almost inhuman ability to read people and figure out exactly what was going on in their heads. 

She’d never said an unkind word to Jim, or anything, but he still couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that he had to be on his best behavior around her. He hadn’t made too much of an attempt to let her get to know him. 

He was surprised to see the card. And even more surprised when he opened it up and saw that both sides were filled with her loopy cursive handwriting.

Bones was next to him now, at the counter, and he must have caught a glimpse of the card over Jim’s shoulder when he leaned over to get a cookie. 

“Oh, lord,” he said. 

“I can’t read this. It’s even worse than yours, somehow.”

Bones snorted, taking a bite of his cookie. 

“And to think you’re the one who’s a doctor.”

“Alright, give me that.” Bones pulled the card out of Jim’s hand. “I’ll read it.”

Jim took the half-eaten cookie out of Bones’ hand in exchange and took a bite out of it before he realized that this was yet  _ another _ thing that regular, normal friends wouldn’t do. Pass one single cookie between them when there was a whole tin right there on the counter. The list of weird, not-entirely-platonic things they did was getting way too long at this point.

Jim swallowed hard, pushed down the little spark of nerves that had just come back again, and tried to focus on Bones instead. 

Although, that might have been worse. Bones cleared his throat and squinted down at the card, and there was nothing particularly attractive or romantic about what he was doing, except for the part where Jim saw the little wrinkle between his eyebrows and the crumb of chocolate in the corner of his lower lip and his messy, unstyled hair, and the curve of his shoulders, and the veins in his wrists, and his strong hands holding the card which he was about to read aloud without even being asked, and--Jim was in love with Bones. 

“ _ Dear Jim, _ ” he started. 

The note was pretty typical, about how she enjoyed having him last year for Christmas and missed his company this year. She listed off some of the things her and Bones did together, and then she did that thing that old ladies did when they wrote letters where they went into great detail about something nobody would have asked her about, in this case about the neighbors on her street getting their fences painted. 

Bones laughed out loud as he read the line  _ and now I look like a damn fool who doesn’t look after her house all because the fence around my yard isn’t white enough to turn you blind _ . 

Jim smiled. This woman was definitely Bones’ mother. He ate another cookie to distract himself from wondering what Bones would be like as an old man--or as a father. 

And then he instinctively held out half of the cookie to Bones, who instinctively took it. 

The rest of the note was normal, sprinkled with more neighborhood gossip, until all of a sudden it wasn’t. 

“ _ Leo is hardly any fun when he’s missing you so much. When he’s not talking about you he’s looking around the room like he thinks you’re about to walk in any second. _ ”

Jim’s heart had stopped beating by the end of that sentence. Bones’ eyes were blown wide, a blush creeping up the back of his neck. He cleared his throat awkwardly, probably trying to diffuse the tension. But it was too late. He was already turning red. Jim would have been blushing too if it weren’t for the fact that all of the blood had just drained from his face out of shock. 

“Is that it?” Jim croaked. He had no idea where that question came from. 

Bones shook his head no, and  _ kept reading _ . 

“ _ So I hope you’ll come back to Atlanta next year or at least take the two of us with you to Iowa. And enjoy the pinwheel cookies. I wasn’t going to send them back with Leo until he told me you two had gotten together and so I made an exception since you’re family now. _

_ Happy Holidays,  _

_ Eleanor McCoy” _

The kitchen was unbearably silent for almost a full minute. Jim was still trying to remember how to inhale and exhale. Even when he figured that part out, he was still a long way from forming a sentence. 

Bones, meanwhile, was more red than Jim had ever seen him. He finally sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers, closing his eyes. 

Jim found a couple words. 

“Bones--you--” he paused. Tried again. “Did you…?”

“Yes.”

“I…um. How--I mean--why. Why did you do that.”

Bones let go of his nose and just covered his face instead with the palm of his hand. 

“She got our card in the mail and put it on the fridge and wouldn’t take no for an answer so I…well I told her we got together back in September.”

The gears started turning in Jim’s head. Or they tried to start turning. It was like Jim understood the entire situation but he just couldn’t figure out  _ how _ the  _ hell _ it had come to this point. Or what the  _ fuck _ they were supposed to do now. Or  _ fuck _ .  _ What  _ the _ fuck _ . 

“So should we...are you gonna tell her we broke up or something?”

“Jesus christ, I don’t know.”

“So then why did you--”

“Because,” Bones gritted out. He ran his hand through the top of his hair, making it even messier, and tossed the greeting card back on the counter like it’d offended him. “I thought,” he started, crossing his arms over his chest and shifting awkwardly and looking down at the kitchen floor. “I thought maybe, by the next time she asked about you and I, that maybe we’d--

He cleared his throat again. 

“We’d be together by then.”

Somehow, after two weeks spent fantasizing about getting together with Bones, Jim was absolutely unprepared for something like that to come out of his mouth. He blinked at Bones. The gears in his head stopped turning altogether. 

“You...what?”

“Yeah.”

“You--”

“I do.”

“You want to--”

“Yeah.” Bones lifted his head and turned to look at Jim, face still tinted pink. He offered a small, shy sort of smile. “I want to.”

“I, um…” Jim clenched his fists at his sides. 

“I want to, too.”

Bones looked shocked, for a second, eyes wide as if it wasn’t so completely obvious that Jim had been in love with him almost the entire time. And then his smile widened and his blush got darker again and he pushed off of the counter to stand right in front of him. 

“Yeah?” Bones asked, and the two of them were going to need to come up with a better story than this, because so far their getting-together story had consisted of nothing but miscommunication and stammering. 

But right now, Jim didn’t care. He nodded his head up and down, looking straight into Bones’ eyes, into his face, which was gradually coming closer to his own. 

Bones’ eyes flicked down to Jim’s mouth and back up, and he raised his eyebrows a little bit in question. 

“Yeah,” Jim breathed. 

Bones leaned forward the rest of the way and kissed him. 

And then he pulled back again, as if he was going to ask another question, and all Jim could do was nod his head rapidly and wrap his arms around Bones’ shoulders and pull him forward into another kiss. 

It was perfect. Better than Jim had imagined all week. Bones was warm and solid and familiar and he tasted like pinwheel cookies and he held Jim in a way that felt completely new, and exciting, and also, somehow, it felt like coming home. 

“So, September?” Jim asked, breathless, pressing their foreheads together.

“I don’t care,” Bones answered. His hands wrapped around Jim’s waist, pulling him closer and pressing their bodies together in a way that made Jim shiver. “I’ve been yours for way longer than that.”

Jim brought their mouths together again. He never wanted it to stop, never wanted to have anymore space between him and Bones than there was right now.  _ Mine _ , he thought. Maybe this didn’t make such a bad story after all. 


	3. love confession in the car / T

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _61\. our friends rent a cabin on the mountains which is great except you and I have to travel up a day later than everyone else_

The drive to Olympic Valley was only about three hours, and the roads were practically empty once they’d cleared Sacramento, but Bones was gripping the steering wheel so tight that his knuckles were white. Jim watched him for a second, his rigid posture, the way he glared out at the road in front of them. 

They’d just reached the end of a CD and he’d been about to switch to another one except he turned his head and saw Bones looking like  _ that _ and now he wasn’t sure if more cheesy Christmas music was going to help. 

Maybe he was mad that they’d had to drive up later than everyone else? But no, that wouldn’t make sense. Everyone else drove up after work last night, and due to a series of completely unsurprising delays (Scotty wasn’t packed,  _ at all _ , Pavel had told his boss he could work late without thinking it through, Nyota had been planning to borrow snow clothes from Christine only to find out that night that they weren’t the same size and she had to go to REI last minute), they didn’t get to the cabin until about 1 in the morning. Jim knew that deep down Bones was happy about being able to sleep a full night before making the drive. 

Well, almost a full night. 

Because the two of them had gotten back to Bones’ apartment at about 1 am, too, from the Emergency Room. 

Oh, right. Maybe that was it. 

“Are you mad at me?” Jim asked. 

Bones’ expression didn’t change even a fraction in response to that question. 

“Why would I be mad,” he demanded.

Jim had known Bones long enough to understand that this question, unlike the way normal people tended to use it, meant  _ yes, I’m mad _ . More specifically, it meant  _ remind me how you made me mad so I know you’re not stupid, too _ . 

“Because I made us late?” Jim tried. 

No response.

“Because you had to go right back to the hospital after getting off a 24-hour shift?”

Nothing. 

“Because…..uh….I can’t drive with a broken ankle so you have to drive us the whole way to the cabin?”

Jim honestly couldn’t think of anything else. He watched Bones’ face from the passenger’s seat, the wrinkle between his eyebrows and the one at the corner of his frown. Whatever he was mad about, it had something to do with their ER trip last night, Jim was sure of it, even though during the actual ER trip itself, Bones hadn’t looked mad at all. 

He’d been….scared, maybe. Worried, definitely. Refusing to leave Jim’s bedside, squinting in disbelief at anything the doctor said. If there was a way for Bones to have fixed Jim’s ankle himself, he would have done it. Instead he watched everything, eyes wide like he hadn’t been awake for 30 hours by then, cataloguing every move by the doctor and every shift in Jim’s expression. 

He wasn’t acting like that, now, with Jim in the passenger’s seat with a yellow cast on his foot. If Jim said anything about being uncomfortable right now he’d probably get nothing but sass in return. 

(Compared to when he said he was in pain last night, and Bones pulled back the curtain and yelled at the nurses for him). 

Bones still didn’t respond. Jim took his time to think some more. They still had an hour to the cabin, anyway. 

It was crazy to think that they hadn’t even left California when they made it to the edge of Eldorado National Forest. There was snow everywhere, on the trees and piled up next to the road. Jim stared out the window, his breath fogging the glass, and almost forgot what they had been talking about and why the car was still silent. 

“I have no idea why you’re mad at me,” Jim finally said to the snowy trees outside his window. He’d sort of….mumbled it. He wasn’t sure if he actually wanted Bones to hear. 

Bones didn’t even miss a beat. 

“I’m mad at you because you broke your ankle yesterday _ morning  _ on your way to work and continued to walk on it for the entire fucking day. And you didn’t even try to call me,  _ or _ text me, and then I came to pick you up last night and you showed me your foot--which was absolutely broken--and asked,  _ do you think I can still snowboard with this bruise? _ ”

“ _ That’s _ why you’re mad? Because I didn’t realize it was broken?”

“ _ Didn’t realize _ my ass.”

Jim turned away from the window, facing Bones again. 

“I really wasn’t sure, okay?”

Bones looked over at Jim out of the corner of his eye. He was still trying his best to be mad and to look mad, but his hands were starting to loosen around the steering wheel. He focused on the road again, and finally he sighed, picking up one of his hands to rub his eyes for a second. 

“ _ How _ do you not realize your ankle is broken.”

“I don’t know, it just didn’t feel broken.”

“Well did it hurt?”

Jim snorted. 

“Yeah, of course it did.”

“You’re supposed to go to the hospital if something hurts, Jim, that’s what it’s there for.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Jim mumbled, but Bones looked like he was starting to calm down, so he figured the coast was clear to put in another Christmas CD. 

-

Jim thought they were done talking about it, and then they had reached the mountain, and Bones was driving through those narrow winding roads with little wood cabins lining either side, and he brought it up again. Because apparently driving on small, steep, icy roads wasn’t enough of a challenge, and he needed to hear about Jim’s problems too. 

“Why didn’t you go to the hospital? And don’t tell me it’s because you didn’t think there was something wrong. I know you’re not that stupid.”

“Wow, thanks.”

Bones sighed. 

“Just tell me,” he said quieter, and Jim wondered if the softness of his voice was meant for him or if he was just focusing so much on driving that he didn’t bother to yell. 

Jim swallowed hard. He knew why he hadn’t gone to the hospital, why he’d spent an entire workday walking around on a broken ankle (although, to be fair, he’d thought it was just a sprain until lunch), why he had waited for Bones. He knew it, he just didn’t think he’d have to say it.

“I was pretty sure it was broken,” Jim admitted, “at least by the time you came over I was pretty sure.”

“See? That wasn’t so hard.”

“Whatever,” Jim said. He looked out the window, as they passed cabin after cabin, some tucked between the trees and some bigger, with huge windows and sprawling front porches. It was easier to say it to the road than to Bones. “It’s just that….I didn’t want to go to the hospital without you.”

“If you’d gone before six I would have been there.”

“I know but--you might have been with someone else. I wanted--”

Jim sighed.

“I wanted you with me.”

“Oh,” Bones said.

“Yeah.”

“Well I’m not gonna act like that’s a good excuse.”

“It’s just that I--”

“Jim, I know. It’s okay.”

Bones did know. He knew about Jim and hospitals and injuries and a childhood with nothing good to look back on. Jim relaxed for the rest of the drive up. He wasn’t sure how much more time had passed of just watching the road outside his window until the car was finally parked. 

Jim opened his door when Bones suddenly cut in, 

“Jim, wait.”

Jim closed his door again. He turned to look at Bones, who wasn’t angry anymore. If anything, he looked more like he had last night, sitting next to Jim’s hospital bed, than he had for the entire drive here. He looked nervous. 

“I’m glad you waited for me,” he said, and then his brow furrowed when he realized his own words. “Well, not that you waited, because that was dumb, but I’m glad you let me take you to the hospital. Glad that you trust me.”

“Of course I trust you,” Jim breathed. It was obvious, wasn’t it? 

Bones nodded, cheeks turning pink just a little bit, and the heat was still on in the car, so it couldn’t have come from the cold. 

“You’re not still mad at me, are you? Because Hikaru told me there’s only one bed left.”

Bones breathed out a laugh, reaching up to push his hair back from his forehead. 

“No, I’m not--I mean, I was. Especially when I remembered what you told me last night about hurting your ankle multiple times already and  _ walking it off _ .”

“That was before I met you.”

“Doesn’t make me feel better.”

“Well it should,” Jim argued, and when his next words entered his mind all of a sudden the car felt too small, and too warm, and Bones was too close to him and Jim realized he’d rather say it to Bones while he glared out at the road than while he looked earnestly into Jim’s eyes. He realized he felt the same way about both versions of Bones, all versions of Bones. The Bones that sat next to his hospital bed and treated Jim’s broken ankle as if it was the worst injury he’d ever seen. The one who complained every time Jim asked him to pull over for coffee or snacks or a bathroom and still  _ did _ it every time. The Bones who knew him so well that he didn’t have to say the difficult things out loud. 

This wasn’t such a difficult thing, though, was it?

Jim’s eyes went wide at the fact that he was really about to do this, in the driveway of the cabin they’d rented for the next four days, with all of their friends right inside, with their entire morning spent arguing in the car together, with his broken ankle in a bright yellow cast. 

“I’m in love with you,” he blurted out. 

Bones stared at him, mouth hanging open. His cheeks turned redder. 

By the time he looked like he was finally about to speak, they both seemed to catch something in their peripheral vision at the same time, and they looked out through the windshield of the car. It was their friends. All of them. Running out of the cabin in various combinations of pajamas and parkas and snow boots. Jim saw their smiling faces as they approached the car, and wondered, for a moment, if that had maybe been a bad time to tell Bones he loved him. 

He didn’t really have time to wonder about that, though, let alone to try and fix it. 

He could see that Bones was having a similar thought the way he immediately wiped the shock off of his face, giving a tight smile to the approaching crowd. 

“Uh…” Jim cleared his throat. “Hold that thought, I guess.”

“Yep,” Bones said, stepping out of the car.

It was going to be a _ long  _ day. 

And that was saying something, considering Jim had just spent the day before walking on a fucking broken ankle. 


	4. the aftermath / M

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SURPRISE! i hope yall didn't think i was really going to leave you with that cliffhanger. this chapter is the second part to chapter three (because i felt like these prompts worked well together)
> 
> THE PROMPT:  
>  _10\. our friends rent a cabin to go skiing and we’re the only ones who stay inside_

Jim actually hadn’t had the foresight to consider what telling Bones _ I’m in love with you _ was going to do to their friendship. He pretty much said the words as soon as he thought them, so it wasn’t like he’d taken any time to think about it, anyway. 

Still, even with no expectations in his head, he felt pretty taken aback when Bones  _ didn’t react at all _ . 

Other than staring at him with his mouth hanging open for a few seconds, and agreeing that they would talk about it later, Bones got out of the car and greeted their friends and carried their bags into the cabin and basically pretended like the last five minutes of their roadtrip hadn’t happened at all. 

Jim tried not to dwell on it too much, which turned out to be easy once he limped out of the car and Christine saw his foot in a big yellow cast and immediately went into caretaker mode. Her and Hikaru carried him up into the cabin and deposited him on the couch, despite Bones griping that he’d  _ brought crutches all the way over here, goddamn it _ . Ten minutes later, Jim was wrapped in half a dozen blankets and there was coffee and everyone was crowded into the little living room to hear the story of how he’d managed to break his ankle yesterday morning and walk on it for an entire day before Bones hauled his ass to the ER. 

Jim kept looking at Bones the entire time he told it, at first because he was waiting for Bones to start complaining about how dumb he was, and then, after Bones didn’t complain, Jim looked back at him because he was waiting for him to do  _ something _ . Anything. He’d never seen Bones so fucking pensive before, sitting in a kitschy, overstuffed armchair with a snowman-shaped mug, only occasionally laughing at Jim’s story when he _ should  _ have been lecturing him about being an idiot. 

The rest of the day passed like that. With Bones just being a little bit...off. Weirdly quiet while Jim talked about breaking his ankle. Surprisingly amenable to driving Nyota back down the mountain to get groceries. Devoid of unnecessary comments when Pavel and Hikaru spread out the map of the slopes on the kitchen table and came up with a plan for tomorrow. Jim sat on a barstool while Bones and Christine cooked dinner and he did not hear  _ one _ single mention of  _ old family recipe _ or  _ georgia tradition _ or  _ any _ of his usual narrative which nobody ever asked for. 

He spent the evening worrying about the fact that he and Bones had to share a bed, a fact which he already knew, actually, before he’d made the genius decision of telling Bones that he was in love with him, but when the time came to go to sleep...nothing happened. It wasn’t even awkward. 

He’d more or less been expecting that they would pick up where they left off in the car, but Bones didn’t say anything more than a half-muttered complaint about it being a _ long-ass day _ and then a more clear  _ get some sleep, Jim _ . 

Jim woke up the next morning--afternoon, almost--to an empty cabin. He pulled on another sweater and limped out of their little room on crutches, towards the kitchen where there was a note on the countertop. 

_ If you’re reading this, we’re on the slopes! _

_ Coffee’s ready, just press the button. Plate full of pancakes in the microwave. Hold down the fort Captain Peg-Leg! We’ll be back at lunch (unless someone gets hurt before then). _

_ -Christine _

Jim got the coffee going and tried to figure out what he was going to do until lunch. Not that he’d meant to do it, but breaking an ankle right before a ski trip was a pretty dumb thing to do. 

He was deep in thought planning a movie marathon when the front door opened and he nearly jumped. But instead of his whole group of friends coming back early, carrying whoever got injured next (Scotty--it was probably going to be Scotty), it was just Bones. 

Bones in his coat and boots and blue jeans and a beanie with his hair sticking out from underneath, definitely not dressed for skiing at all. Jim stared at him for a few seconds before he caught himself. He forced himself to speak, even though making eye contact with Bones only served to remind him of everything that had happened--and not happened--yesterday. 

“You...didn’t go skiing?”

Bones snorted, shaking his head. He took his coat off and hung it up before bending down to untie his boots. 

“If you think I came here to actually  _ ski _ you don’t know me at all.”

He sat down on one of the barstools, facing Jim, and pulled off his beanie next. The tip of his nose and cheeks were still pink from the cold and Jim almost wanted to blurt out  _ I love you _ again just to give Bones a better chance to react, except, with his luck, he’d say it and then the rest of their friends would come barging in a second later. 

Also, it’d be a stupid fucking thing to do, and he wouldn’t even be capable of kicking himself because he only had one functioning leg right now. 

“I ruined your plans, didn’t I. You were gonna spend the whole weekend staring out the window looking at birds.”

“That was exactly my plan,” Bones deadpanned. Jim couldn’t stop the corner of his mouth from quirking up as he went to pour himself a cup of coffee. 

“Actually,” Bones started, and he was already saying more words to Jim this morning than he had all day yesterday since they arrived. “If you hadn’t broken your ankle you probably would have managed to guilt me into watching yall wipeout on the slopes all morning, so I think you managed to un-ruin my plans.”

Jim breathed out a laugh. 

“You’re welcome, then,” Jim said. 

Things were finally starting to feel normal again between the two of them when Bones decided to go and pipe up again with, 

“We should probably talk about yesterday.”

Jim nearly choked on his coffee and had to take a second to force it down his throat. 

“Should we? I feel like we could just keep ignoring it.”

“Is that what you want?” Bones asked, and he was serious. He was looking at Jim, his expression serious, and open, and earnest, and it was 11 am and they’d slept in the same bed last night and somehow it was too damn early for this.

Jim felt like he was being studied under a microscope, the way Bones was looking at him right now. But if what he’d said yesterday hadn’t ruined everything between them, it probably couldn’t get any worse. 

“No,” Jim finally whispered. 

Bones let out a long exhale, and Jim had no idea how he was so calm about this. Most things Jim did or said to him were met with strong emotions, usually in the form of bitching or lectures or unrestrained laughter. He might as well have been talking about something boring, like the weather. 

He pointed to the coffee pot. 

“Can I have some?”

Or coffee.

“Yeah.”

Jim took one look at the cheesy mug collection in the cupboard and decided to give Bones the one that said  _ MERRY CHRISTMAS YA FILTHY ANIMAL _ because it just seemed like the right thing to do. Bones smirked a little bit at his choice and then said, looking down into the mug, 

“It’s your fault for waiting so long. I don’t know why you couldn’t have told me when I was driving you home from the hospital or something. You _ had  _ to wait until we were about to be in a cabin full of people.”

Jim swallowed hard. 

“Why would you want me to tell you I was in love with you while you were driving me home at one in the morning.”

“Would’ve made more sense, honestly.” Bones took a sip of his coffee. “And we could have had sex at least once before we got here so we wouldn’t fill this place with tension all weekend.”

“You--what?”

Jim had to put his own mug down so he could steady himself against the counter. He looked up at Bones again, who was completely silent, sitting there and waiting for Jim to respond. 

“You’re serious,” Jim asked. “You mean...have you been into me this whole time?”

Bones shrugged--he fucking  _ shrugged _ \--and nodded.

“You bastard,” Jim breathed. He scrambled to get his crutches again from where he’d leaned them against the counter. “You asshole, you--” Jim started limping towards their shared room on his crutches and his stupid yellow cast. He stopped for a second to look over his shoulder at Bones, who was more or less on the same page it looked like, getting off of the barstool. “Come with me. Idiot.”

He could hear Bones laughing as he followed after him, and it just made him mad and also it made him move even faster, until he’d made it to their little room full of cutesy landscape paintings and wood-carved knick knacks and a mountain of quilts on the bed, and Bones closed the door behind them and then there was a hand snaking around his waist, turning Jim around. 

“I can’t believe you,” Jim whispered in the air between them, looking into Bones’ stupid, kind, eager eyes. At the way Bones smiled at him and gently took the crutches out from under his arms, urging Jim to lean into his arm instead. “How long?”

Bones tried to hold onto Jim’s waist while he maneuvered the crutches to lean against the wall. 

“Well, I didn’t really think about it until yesterday, but I’m pretty sure it’s been a while.”

“How are you so calm about this?” Jim asked again, and he had no idea how their mouths ended up so close. Bones was just,  _ closer _ , now, his free hand meeting the other at the small of Jim’s back. 

“Because I know you’re not going anywhere,” Bones answered, face coming so close to Jim’s that he could almost feel his lips moving around each word, and Jim was sure they were about to kiss, was frozen in place waiting for it, when Bones paused, voice going a little flat. “Especially not now that you’ve only got one foot you can walk on.”

Jim whined. He had no idea where it came from, if it was because Bones was teasing him or because he was standing so close--and still wouldn’t kiss him. Or because he had waited, so,  _ so  _ long. He never thought he would be like this, that either of them would be like this. Then again, he hadn’t really thought anything through when he’d started this whole mess yesterday morning. 

“I hate you,” was all Jim could say. He leaned forward and finally pressed their mouths together, to kiss that stupid self-amused smile right off of Bones’ face. To kiss him and feel him laugh, low and rumbling, into his mouth and wrap his arms around Bones’ shoulders in a way that he knew would make Bones sigh and pull their bodies closer. Jim shivered. 

“You do?” Bones asked, kissing the corner of his mouth, and then his jaw. 

“Yes.”

“That’s not what you said yesterday.”

“Mmh. What did I say yesterday.” Bones kissed the side of his neck, underneath his jaw, one of his hands sliding up the line of Jim’s back, and Jim tilted his head back, stared up at the wooden planks on the ceiling. He sighed, his hands curling in the fabric of the flannel Bones was wearing. 

“ _ I’m in love with you, _ ” Bones repeated. The sound of those words, the feeling of them against the skin of Jim’s neck, made him shiver again. His hand was shaking when he brought it up to the back of Bones’ head, and he tugged on his hair, just slightly, just enough to make Bones raise his head again. His face was flushed and his eyes were dark and he was smiling. Jim couldn’t really find it in him to be mad anymore. 

He was about to make some sort of joke about how Bones was a doctor and Jim was injured and he shouldn’t be letting him spend so much time on his feet, but Bones was already ahead of him, leading Jim backwards towards the bed. Jim was clumsy and tired and still in shock from everything he had just happened, and if he’d had the chance to plan ahead he would have put together a whole grand seduction routine, with innuendos and one-liners and bedroom eyes. 

Instead it was happening like this, when Jim had just woken up and he was wearing two sweaters and loose, faded pajamas and his foot was in a big yellow cast and he had coffee breath and apparently, Bones didn’t even care. 

He lowered Jim down against the mattress, took his face in both hands and kissed him again. Each kiss was longer and deeper than the last and Jim felt breathless and vulnerable under Bones’ hands, like it was his first time, except his first time hadn’t even felt as good as just  _ kissing  _ Bones felt right now. 

Jim slipped his hands underneath Bones’ flannel and laughed at the way Bones flinched. 

“Christ your hands are cold,” Bones mumbled into his mouth, even though he wasn’t even trying to move away from Jim’s touch. He spread his palms out against the warmth of his back. 

“Why did this take us so long?”

“Because you kept dragging your damn feet, that’s why,” Bones said. He pressed another kiss to the corner of Jim’s mouth, quickly, and sat up a little, just enough to start undoing the buttons of his shirt. Jim scrambled to get his own sweaters off, squirming against the pillows. 

Bones sat back on his heels, and Jim saw the moment he caught that yellow cast in the corner of his eye. 

“Damn it, this should be elevated,” he muttered. Jim couldn’t stop himself from smiling as he watched Bones fuss over his ankle, rushing to get a stack of throw pillows underneath his foot like it was life or death. 

“Yeah I dragged my feet all the way into that pothole.” 

“Wouldn’t have stepped into that pothole in the first place if you hadn’t been jaywalking,” Bones said, his voice already nearing that dry,  _ I’m-about-to-lecture-you _ tone. Jim instinctively shot back, 

“Well I wouldn’t have had to jaywalk if--” he paused, taking in the sight of Bones at the foot of the bed,  _ their _ bed, already shirtless and blushing and fluffing the pillows under Jim’s foot with surgical precision. He couldn’t even finish his comeback, couldn’t bother to keep bickering the way they always did. Finally Bones looked up, and they caught eyes, and the corner of his mouth curled into a little smile and Jim felt like his heart was overflowing. 

“Come here,” he said instead. 

Bones settled next to him on the bed, tilted Jim’s face to the side to kiss him again, trailed his fingertips across his jaw, down the line of his neck, to the center of his chest. Jim struggled to breathe. 

He had no idea what was happening to him right now. He’d gone to bed with plenty of people before this, maybe too many to really count. He’d tried everything at least once. And here in this bed full of cross-stitched pillows and pioneer quilts, he didn’t even have his pants off yet and still he couldn’t remember a time he’d ever felt naked like this. Exposed, maybe. Vulnerable. 

“Why does it feel so different with you,” he asked, breathless. 

“Because I know you,” Bones said, and he was right. 

He wasn’t naked. He was known. 


	5. christmas dinner setup / T

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _13\. my family invites you to join our holiday meal as an obvious setup and i’m so sorry_
> 
> the interpretation of this prompt is a little loose, and also partly inspired by the found-family dynamic from aisha's fic Hiatus ;)

Leonard was looking forward to Christmas this year. The holiday would never be the same as it was when he was a kid, of course, but it could at least get better. 

Christmas was hard, after his dad died. And then he got his surgical residency and spent his first Christmas on shift, realized it was a pretty good way to cope, and volunteered to work Christmas from then on. 

It was only a matter of time before their head of surgery, Phil Boyle, caught on. And then Leonard was effectively discouraged (banned) from working  _ any _ holidays, and he and his mom were invited (required) to attend Christmas dinner at Phil’s house. Leonard had been dreading it the first time. He hadn’t observed the holiday in five years, and hadn’t socialized for...even longer than that, probably. He was sort of hoping that his mom wouldn’t even go for it when he told her about the invitation, but she did, and she pulled out her recipe book to cook something to take with them, and at that point he really didn’t have a choice. 

But Christmas dinner wasn’t bad at all. In fact, it was actually pretty nice. Phil and Leonard’s mom seemed to bond immediately over bragging about him to each other until Leonard got fed up and left the room, only to run into Phil’s partner, Chris, who was probably the nicest man in existence. He seemed to sense that Leonard felt like he was in over his head and gave him a long and detailed tour of the house to distract him from it all. By the time they made it back to the dining room to see that a dozen more guests had arrived, Leonard didn’t even feel awkward anymore. 

So this time, he was excited. He’d just finished his residency a few months ago and felt like his work had gotten harder and his hours had gotten longer, even though he was still in the same hospital. He thought he’d had no social life before, but that wasn’t even the half of it, apparently. 

Leonard and his mom arrived to Phil’s house half an hour early, just like last year, to set the table and catch up a bit before the rest of the guests arrived. 

Only the guy who opened the door wasn’t Phil  _ or _ Chris. 

“Hi,” he said, and Leonard sort of...froze. It had to be because he never left the hospital anymore, because he had no life and he hadn’t gone on a date since he was in school, but he was pretty sure he was face-to-face with the most attractive man he’d ever seen. Tall and blond with a sideways smile and big, friendly eyes and a dark green sweater that showed the width of his shoulders and the shape of his arms, and--

Leonard was staring. He realized his mom had gone inside already, because she was standing behind Mr. Green Sweater talking to Phil--about Leonard, from the looks of it. Green Sweater opened his mouth like he was going to say something, maybe try saying  _ hi _ again just to see if Leonard would respond this time, when Chris suddenly stuck his head out from the dining room. 

“Leonard!” he called. He joined everyone in the hall, standing in the doorway, and Leonard realized he still hadn’t left the front porch. “Well come in, already. I see you and Jim have already met.”

“Something like that,” Jim said. Leonard was already kicking himself. He knew there were going to be other people here tonight, but he’d been expecting other hospital employees, Chris and Phil’s friends, the old lady who lived next door. If he knew he was about to meet someone like Jim he would have shaved first. 

Chris all but pulled Leonard inside and led the two of them through the hall, past the gossip session between Phil and his mother and into the living room, where the fireplace was already lit. 

“I’m glad you could both make it this year. I’ve been thinking you two would get along, you have so much in common.”

“Do we?” Leonard asked, watching Chris as he poured two glasses of bourbon, because it was easier to watch him than to look over at Jim and see the way the flickering light from the fireplace cast shadows across his face and reflected in his eyes and shined off of the little specks of gold thread in his green sweater. 

“Uh, yeah.” Chris smiled. He handed them both a glass. “You both work too much. Hey, I think someone’s calling me in the kitchen, I better go. I’ll see you two at dinner, why don’t you stay here and get to know each other?”

Chris fled as quickly as he’d entered, and now Leonard and Jim were stuck staring at each other again, this time with alcohol. 

“Well. Cheers,” Jim said, and clinked his glass against Leonard’s. 

“Did  _ you _ hear anyone call Chris from the kitchen?”

“Nope.”

Leonard drank at least half of his bourbon in one go, because he was about to need it. He cleared his throat, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, looked up and realized that Jim had been watching him the entire time, the corner of his mouth turned up. 

“This was a set up, wasn’t it.”

Jim breathed out a laugh, looking down into his glass. 

“Yep.”

To his credit, Chris had totally nailed down Leonard’s taste. He’d done his homework, though, now that he thought about it. Coming to check in on Leonard whenever he came to the hospital to see Phil, inviting him over for dinner a few more times throughout the year, and asking him every possible question about himself. Leonard had just written it off as part of his neverending friendliness--and, as Phil put it once, his habit of adopting every troubled kid he got his hands on. Apparently, Chris had been studying him this whole time. Leonard wondered if it was the same on Jim’s end. 

“Has he done this to you before?”

“Couple times.”

Leonard snorted, and caught eyes with Jim over the bottom of his glass as he took a sip, and saw the muscles of his neck move as he swallowed, and...half of his bourbon probably wasn’t enough. He maybe needed to drink the rest of that, right now, if he was even going to make it to dinner (where Chris had definitely sat them next to each other at the table).

“To be honest, though,” Jim said, his voice a little rough and a little bit lower from the alcohol. “You’re the hottest one so far.”

This time Leonard didn’t even try to hide the shock on his face. He stared at Jim, and his mouth was probably hanging open, too, and he was just starting to  _ begin _ to  _ think _ about what the hell he was going to say to that, when,

“Leo!” his mom yelled from somewhere else in the house. Leonard was simultaneously relieved and disappointed. 

“What?” he called back, eyes still locked on Jim’s. There was something in Jim’s face, now, something different from the half-confusion half-amusement that had been there before. His eyes were dark in a way that made Leonard’s clothes feel too tight.

“Can you go and move the car out of the driveway and park it up the street before people start showin up?”

“Yes ma’am!” he said, and turned to go, before he remembered the drink in his hand. He turned back around and gave it to Jim. “Here, uh. I gotta go.”

Jim smiled, nodding his head. 

“I heard.”

Leonard didn’t _ run away _ from Jim, exactly, but if he took ten times longer than necessary to park the car up the street, who was to say?

-

He made it back to the dining room to see that his suspicion was right, and his place card was right next to where Jim was already sitting. He could see Chris smiling at them from the doorway of the kitchen and decided to ignore him this time, and sit down. The rest of the guests were arriving, anyway. The two of them didn’t have to be alone for long. 

Jim gave him his glass back after he sat down. 

“I topped you off,” he whispered. 

Leonard felt himself smiling a little bit. He was also certain that Chris was still watching them. 

“Thanks,” he whispered back. “And thanks for calling me hot.”

Jim laughed, looking down at his lap, and he started blushing a little bit, too. It was a good look on him. 

-

The dining table finally filled up and dinner started and Jim and Leonard managed to find some less-awkward things to talk about, at first joining the conversations around them, and then, in the middle of the over-crowded table, speaking one-on-one. Leonard couldn’t help but feel impressed, again, with Chris’ matchmaking skills, because Jim wasn’t just gorgeous; he was funny, and smart, and he laughed at Leonard’s fucked-up sense of humor and he didn’t get bored hearing about his job in surgery. Leonard didn’t get bored either, and he made it at least fifteen minutes into watching Jim talk about his job as a robotics engineer, seeing the way his whole face lit up, when he decided that he could listen to this man talk for at least another hour, or maybe the rest of the night, or maybe even the rest of his life. 

So the next time Jim stopped to take a sip of his wine, he went for it. 

“Do you want to have dinner with me?”

Jim put his wine down, tilting his head to the side. 

“Isn’t that what we’re already doing?”

Leonard rolled his eyes, but he could see the smile spreading out over Jim’s face. And then the hand that had been holding Jim’s wine glass was resting on his thigh underneath the table. Leonard instinctively looked around the table to see if anyone had caught that. Everyone else seemed to be busy with their own conversations. 

Everyone except for Chris, who was leaning back in his chair and watching them with the most self-satisfied expression Leonard had ever seen. 

“Are you working on New Year’s?” Jim asked, pulling Leonard out of his thoughts again. 

“Actually…” Leonard turned back to Jim, and for once he was grateful for Phil’s micromanagement of his schedule. “I’m all yours.”

-

Maybe Leonard had been too nervous to notice them before, or maybe he missed the part where Chris disappeared from dinner, but once everyone got up from the table it seemed like he and Jim couldn’t go anywhere without running into hanging mistletoe. The second time it happened, he was sure it wasn’t a coincidence. The third time, Jim kissed him on the mouth. 

Leonard decided that this was  _ way _ better than spending Christmas in the hospital. 


	6. holiday goose-chase / T

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _40\. i just found out that a friend of a friend of a friend isn’t hosting their annual holiday party this year, so now how am i going to have my annual run in with you?_
> 
> WE LOVE A MAN ON A MISSION

“What do you mean you’re in _love_ with him?” 

Gaila’s voice and face and whole demeanor were filled with disbelief. Jim frowned, looking through the windows of the coffee shop at the busy street outside. 

He was in love with a man he only saw once a year. 

Somehow, he’d made it three years before he realized how weird that is. 

“I just have a gut feeling, okay? He’s perfect. I’ve never met anyone like him.”

“So, Jim, my darling. If he’s so perfect, how come you won’t see him more than once a year?”

Jim turned back to Gaila, and he made it about three seconds, face-to-face with her expression of _this better be good,_ before he broke. 

“Because I don’t know his name,” he groaned, and dropped his face into his hands. 

Gaila was an amazing and also long-suffering best friend, and she somehow managed to find it in her to comfort Jim no matter how stupid and self-induced his issues could get. She was also tough as nails. This was why it made sense when she scooted her chair around the table to start rubbing his back, while simultaneously continuing to drill him with questions. 

“I know you’re not exactly the world’s best conversationalist, but how can you talk to the perfect man three separate times and not get his name.”

“I don’t knowww,” Jim whined. “I think he told me the first time and I just didn’t remember, and then after that I didn’t want him to think I forgot his name because I wanted him to like me and I just got so distracted I forgot to even ask for his number and I--”

“Shh. Hey. Quit talking in circles, you’re gonna get dizzy.”

“Mmmmph.”

“Just ask him for his number this year and when he puts it in your phone he’ll write his name, too. When are you going to see him anyway?”

“At the holiday party.”

“What holiday party?”

“Nyota’s friend Christine’s coworker’s holiday party.”

-

“Geoffrey’s party? The guy Christine works with?”

“Does he have a really big house with a private movie theater?”

Jim had kissed Mr. Perfect in that private movie theater last year. It was a really long kiss. It had almost turned into something more, his hands pulling Jim’s shirt untucked from his slacks and walking him back towards the big leather seats, when another (very drunk) party guest walked in on them and burst out laughing. That pretty much killed the mood, and then the two of them couldn’t seem to get away again, and _then_ Mr. Perfect disappeared into the crowd right as Jim’s designated driver started ushering him home, and he left without even a goodbye kiss. 

“Yeah, the place is huge. That’s why he used to throw parties there.”

“ _Used_ to??” Jim whipped his head around. 

Nyota shrugged in her cherry red coat. 

“Christine said he’s not throwing one this year.”

“Oh my _god._ ”

Nyota kept walking, but still she slowed down to let Jim react to the news, even though she didn’t understand why he was taking it so badly. Jim really didn’t deserve such good friends. 

“Is that the only holiday party you get invited to, or something?”

“No it’s--” Jim sighed, shoving his hands in his pockets while they walked through the park. He mentally prepared himself to admit to this a second time. “There’s this guy I always saw there. I was kind of...hoping I’d see him again. I mean. I _need_ to see him again.”

“So? Call him. Ask him out.”

“I don’t have his number.”

“I can ask Christine for his number.”

“I don’t...know his name.”

Nyota stopped, staring out at the duck pond next to the trail. It was frozen in big chunks, some of the ducks sitting on the ice in little groups. Jim stood next to her, cringing at himself. Including Gaila, and Nyota, and now the ducks, the number of witnesses to this absurd chapter of his life was rapidly increasing. 

Nyota took a deep, slow breath, which meant she was about to tread very lightly on something she already considered a lost cause. 

“Do you know anything about him? Like if he works with Christine or not? If he’s friends with Geoffrey?”

“I…”

He didn’t have to finish that sentence for her to understand that his answer was no. 

“Okay.” She pressed her mouth into a flat line. Jim could see her writing up a game plan in her head. A few minutes later, she turned to face him. 

“I assume you at least know what he looks like.”

“Yeah.”

 _That_ part, he couldn’t forget. No matter how hard he tried. He couldn’t forget about the first time he’d seen him, on the second floor veranda, leaning against the doorway in a dark blue suit. He was tall and well-built and tan, with a handsome face and neatly-styled brown hair, holding a glass of punch and looking out across the room like he was absolutely bored. And then he caught eyes with Jim, and his mouth slowly curved into a smile.

Jim had been in love ever since. 

“Why don’t I give you Christine’s number, and you can describe him to her.”

“What if she doesn’t know who he is?”

Nyota gave him a sympathetic smile. 

“Then you can ask Christine for Geoffrey’s number and do it all over again.”

-

“Are you talking about McCoy?” 

Jim actually called Christine for the first time around noon this morning, which went unanswered, only to get a text from her around six that said she was on shift until midnight. He may or may not have stayed up past midnight just to call her again. 

“Uh... _maybe?_ What’s his first name?”

“Leonard. Leonard McCoy.”

All of a sudden he got a flash of a few seconds from that first party, like one of those sepia-toned memory sequences in the movies. The sound of his deep, southern-accented voice, the feeling of his hand shaking Jim’s when he said _McCoy, Leonard McCoy_.

“Yes! Yes, that’s him. Thank fuck.”

“He doesn’t work here anymore.”

“ _What._ ”

“He moved to another hospital last January.”

“Do you know which hospital? Is he still in the city?”

Christine sighed. 

“I don’t know, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, I…” Jim pushed a hand through his hair. The more people he dragged into this the more ridiculous it felt, but he was still nowhere near giving up. “Do you have his phone number?”

“Sorry, Jim, I don’t. I really didn’t talk to him that much, he was downstairs in the ER and I mostly do rotations in oncology.”

“Would Geoffrey have his number?”

The call went quiet for a minute while Christine thought about it. 

“It’s worth a shot. I mean, otherwise how would he end up at Geoffrey’s party three years in a row?”

“Okay,” Jim suppressed the urge to groan. “Can you give me Geoffrey’s number so I can ask him.”

-

“Leonard McCoy? That’s an unusual request.”

“Is it?”

“Can’t say I’ve ever heard of someone trying to track him down like you are.”

Jim wanted to say _well I wouldn’t have to track him down if you were still throwing your ridiculous party in your giant house this year_ but he figured it was a bad idea to sass the man whose help he needed so bad. So he kept it inside, and at least felt grateful that this was a phone call so Geoffrey didn’t have to witness the desperate look that was probably written on his face. 

“I...saw him at one of your parties and forgot to get his number. But Christine says he doesn’t work at the hospital with you anymore.”

“Nope, he left the ER last year for a job in surgery. I miss that guy. I liked listening to him bitch about things.”

“Is he still in town? Do you have his number? Fuck, is he even still single?”

“Chapel told me you might be neurotic.”

Jim couldn’t even think of what to say to that. Thankfully he didn’t have to reply before Geoffrey spoke up again. 

“Look, I’ll give you his number, but he’s not good about that kind of thing. He can hardly use a pager.”

“Great.”

“If you really want to get a hold of him, go to the diner on 22nd. Rosie’s, or something. He’s there after every shift, it’s right next to his apartment building.”

Now _that_ was actually great. 

“I am forever in your debt,” Jim said. This time, he wasn’t going to risk his memory. He scrambled around the kitchen for a notepad and wrote down _Rosie’s (?) diner on 22nd_. 

“Don’t mention it,” Geoffrey replied, “just please don’t have sex in my home theater again.”

Jim felt his face heat up. 

“Wait, is _that_ why you’re not having another holiday party?”

“Ha!” he laughed, and hung up the phone. 

-

“You want some more coffee, sugar?”

Jim had decided he was crazy as soon as he even had the _thought_ to come back to Rosie’s a second time, but at that point he’d come so far that it seemed stupider to give up than to try again. He was in hour three of sitting in a squeaky leather booth, surrounded by cheesy holiday decorations and full of at least four cups of diner coffee. Something told him that it still wasn’t time to give up, yet. 

“Yes please.” He smiled up at the waitress as she topped him off. 

“Can I get you anything to eat? You’ve been sitting here an awful long time.”

Jim’s smile got a little bit tight. 

“I’m still waiting for someone.”

“Well alright,” she said, turning when the bell at the top of the doorway jingled. Jim perked up, too, hoping that it was Leonard opening the door, but it was an elderly couple instead. 

It _had_ to be a couple, didn’t it. 

He stared out of the window for a while longer, looking for Leonard and thinking about ordering pancakes, and absently listening to the different pet-names their waitress gave every new customer who walked in. 

And then the bell jingled again, and he heard her greet someone in a way which was way less cheesy than she greeted everyone else, in a way which definitely sounded familiar, maybe even routine--

“Well there you are! You’ve been working like crazy this week, I’ve hardly seen you!”

Jim should have realized who it was sooner, but it was pretty much undeniable once the guy responded.

“I used to think the ER got crowded around the holidays. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who…”

When Jim finally turned away from the window, Leonard was already staring at him. He was frozen in the doorway, his coat halfway off his shoulders, face full of shock. This was a completely different Leonard than holiday-party-Leonard. Leonard wearing blue scrubs, with messy hair and dark circles and a five o’clock shadow at the end of a long shift. It took about two seconds for Jim to confirm that he was still in love with this Leonard, and probably would be with _every_ Leonard. 

“Hi,” Leonard finally said. 

Their waitress looked back and forth between them with wide eyes and promptly pretended to find something to do. 

“Have dinner with me?” he asked. 

He watched that same, slow smile spread across Leonard’s face. 

“Yeah,” he said. 

Jim grinned. He couldn’t wait to tell Gaila about this. And Nyota. And Christine. All the people who thought he was crazy for being so intense. Hell, he’d call Geoffrey again, too. Everyone needed to know that Jim had just pulled this whole thing off. 

-

“What are you thinking about?”

“You.”

“Really?”

“Really. When Geoff told me he wasn’t throwing a party this year I was worried I’d never see you again,” Leonard said. 

Jim propped himself up on one elbow, looking down at him. 

“You never tried to look for me? It took a lot of work to find you, you know.”

Leonard smiled. The tips of his cheeks were still flushed, and he looked tired in a completely different way, now, and relaxed, and Jim just wanted to kiss him again. He reached up to brush Jim’s hair away from his forehead. 

“Can I be honest?”

He trailed his fingertips from Jim’s forehead down to the curve of one eyebrow, the line of his cheek. Jim turned just slightly to kiss the tip of his index finger. 

“‘Course.”

Leonard watched him closely, tracing the line of his lower lip, and whispered, 

“I would have gone looking for you, but I forgot your name.”


	7. ski lodge sex / E

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> got six chapters in and realized i STILL hadn't written anything spicy. hope everyone is having as good of a holiday as these two ;)
> 
> _07\. you’re my hot ski instructor and i’m failing the bunny hill_

“Ow, fuck.” Leonard negotiated his way from the door of his cabin to the nearest chair and fell backwards into it. He exhaled through his teeth. “It’s definitely worse than a sprain.”

“It’s just a sprain,” said Jim, his ski instructor from this morning, who for some reason insisted on walking him back to his cabin even though he refused to believe that Leonard was actually injured. Jim closed the door behind them and started to strip off his ski gear. 

Leonard just watched, because his entire body was either throbbing in pain or numb from the cold, and if he was going to die in his snow pants, so be it. Also, he watched, because, well…

Jim his ski instructor was also pretty hot. Especially when he’d lost the puffy snowsuit and was standing in front of Leonard in just his sweater and socks and those tight black athletic pants. At a certain point Leonard just had to stop himself and ask,

“Wait, why did you come back here with me?”

Jim let out a little huff of laughter and turned around to hang up his clothes next to the door. 

“Because,” he explained, “you left my slopes incredibly distraught and bitching about your knee, and I’m a dedicated ski instructor who wants to make sure you’re alright.”

“Well I ain’t.”

“--and if you actually tore your MCL, which I don’t think you did, but if you  _ did _ , then I at least owe you some takeout.”

“It’s torn,” Leonard spat out, slouching further in his chair.

That made Jim turn around, finally, smiling in the same way he had all morning while he watched Leonard consistently wipeout on the bunny hill. 

“I’m going to prove to you that it’s not. Once I can actually look at it.” Jim walked over to the cabin’s little living room, to Leonard in his chair, and sank to his knees, and Leonard tried to pull his head out of the gutter so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash. 

Jim had apparently only done that so he could take Leonard’s boots off. 

“This resort really offers full service, doesn’t it.”

Jim snorted, looked up at Leonard through his lashes for a moment and then went back to the laces of his boots. Leonard just let it happen, at this point. This whole ski-resort-vacation thing had been a surprise in the first place. He wasn’t really going to question whatever came out of it (which now included slipping on the ice constantly, getting drunk in the town’s one bar and singing Bing Crosby at the top of his lungs with some stranger who had a Scottish accent, biting the dust on the bunny hill and then being escorted to his cabin by his hot ski instructor who was now on his knees in front of him).

“What are you doing up here, anyway? I don’t want to assume, but I’m really getting the impression that you hate snow, and the cold, and also skiing, which...is kinda the whole point on this mountain.”

“My staff surprised me with it,” Leonard said, propping his elbow up on the arm of the chair so he could rest his head on his hand. “I guess they thought I needed a vacation.”

“Your staff?” Jim asked, pulling one boot off and moving to the next.

“I work at a hospital.”

“A doctor,” he said quietly, like he was saying it to himself, almost. 

“A surgeon,” Leonard clarified, “which means I know a lot about the human body, which means I know that my MCL is torn.”

“Uh huh.” Jim took off his other boot. He tossed both of them in the direction of the door, where he’d left his own a few minutes ago. “Well if you’re a surgeon, that means you’re a scientist, which means you also believe in second opinions.”

Leonard was seconds away from a comeback, except he lost his train of thought when Jim started to push the bottom of his snow pants up his calf. And then a couple inches before Leonard’s knee, the pants wouldn’t budge anymore. Jim looked up. 

“Not to be forward, but would you mind taking your pants off.”

Leonard had no idea how he was managing to keep such a straight face. They were basically acting out the introduction of a porn right now, and he was sitting there, staring up at Leonard expectantly as if it was completely normal to him to follow a student home and ask him to take his pants off. 

So Leonard stood up and took his pants off. But no pants and a ski jacket felt weird, so he stripped down to his t shirt and boxers and sat back down before he started to overthink it--and before his knee gave out again. 

Jim scooted closer on his knees, rubbing his hands together to warm them up. 

“Which knee is it?”

“The right,” he answered, resting his head in his hand again. This guy wasn’t even a doctor, and Leonard had met him, like, six hours ago, and for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to hesitate at anything he asked of him. 

Jim carefully placed his hands on either side of his knee. Leonard hadn’t even realized how cold his leg was until he felt the warmth of his palms. 

“What’s your pain level?” he asked, his fingertips slowly pressing in at different points around his knee. Leonard hissed through his teeth when he managed to find the exact spot where it hurt. He instinctively jerked his leg out of Jim’s touch, only to have it gently (and somehow forcefully) pulled back. 

“Five.”

Jim looked up at him through his lashes again. “Five now or five when I put pressure on your MCL?”

Leonard rubbed his face. 

“When you put pressure on it,” he said. “Right now I guess it’s...a three?”

Jim hummed. 

“It’s not swollen at all,” he observed. 

“Probably from the cold. I can diagnose my own knee without help, you know.”

“I’m sure you can.” He slowly started to move Leonard’s leg a little bit side to side, stopping in the middle to bend his knee a few times. “I’m just not sure about your capacity to be objective. Do you feel your kneecap moving out of place?”

Leonard was a little hung up on that _ capacity to be objective _ comment, but he still answered honestly. 

“No.”

“I know you want this to be torn, but your knee’s not even loose. It couldn’t be more than a Grade 1 tear. But I think it’s just sprained.”

He wanted to find another reason to complain about Jim’s insistence of his own medical opinion over Leonard’s, but it was hard when Jim actually seemed to know what he was talking about. And even harder, because Jim was still really hot. Even when he was arguing with Leonard and subtly insulting him. It was taking every last bit of self control Leonard had not to get turned on at the sight of Jim on his knees in front of him, at his bright blue eyes and his face flushed from windburn. 

“What do you recommend, doctor,” Leonard deadpanned, and that made Jim smile, which made the whole don’t-get-turned-on thing even worse. 

“I’m gonna tape it and you’re gonna take it easy.”

Jim managed to pull athletic tape out of...somewhere, and he was back on the floor again to tape Leonard’s knee. Leonard must have spaced out for that part because the next thing he knew, Jim wasn’t in front of his legs, but between them. One of his hands stayed curled around his knee. 

“Does it still hurt?” he asked. There was something different in his voice this time, like he was transitioning out of ski-instructor mode.

Apparently, that was exactly it.

“I think I’m too tired to notice.”

“Do you want me to take you to bed?”

Jesus christ. 

Leonard went ahead and said that out loud, actually. 

“Jesus christ,” he mumbled, and then, a little bit louder, “are you coming on to me?”

“Yes,” Jim said plainly. His hand slowly started to move away from Leonard’s knee, further up his thigh, stopping at the hem of his boxers. 

“Is this why you followed me home?”

Jim smiled, like he’d just been caught, eyelashes fluttering until he was looking down at--yep. His groin. That’s exactly where he was looking. As if he was worried his intent was somehow still unclear, his fingertips slipped underneath the edge of Leonard’s boxer shorts. 

“You haven’t figured that out already?”

“I didn’t get very far past wondering if you always escort your students home,” Leonard said, shifting in his chair. Jim’s hand wasn’t even that close to his cock yet and he was already starting to get hard, just from the sight of Jim on the floor and the realization that Jim had  _ meant _ to turn him on this whole time. “Couldn’t be sure of it, considering I don’t know you.”

“Don’t call yourself my student, that makes me feel like a creep.” Jim scooted even closer on his knees, his free hand coming up to Leonard’s other thigh. “And I really don’t do this often. But I don’t get hot doctors on my slopes that often, either.”

Leonard scoffed.

“Sorry,” Jim corrected, “ _ surgeons. _ ”

He shifted in his chair again, and Jim’s hands only moved closer to where he was now tenting the front of his boxers. 

“Wait.” He took his hands off of Leonard’s lap completely, looking back up at him. “You’re into this, right? I mean I’m pretty sure I’ve been getting signals, but I never really got a clear  _ yes. _ ”

“Yes,” Leonard said, clearly. 

Jim grinned and pulled his sweater off over his head, revealing his toned chest and arms and a flush on his skin which definitely wasn’t from windburn. And then his hands were back on Leonard’s thighs, so warm that Leonard wondered if they were going to leave burn marks on his skin, but they weren’t moving slowly. Jim palmed at his cock over the fabric of his boxers, eyes sparkling a little as he watched his face, gauging his reaction. 

Leonard decided that, fuck it, he was on vacation. He reached down to bury his fingers into Jim’s thick, blond hair, slid his hand to the back of his neck, and then coaxed him up from the floor and into a kiss. 

It turned out Jim was way better at kissing than he was at teaching Leonard how to ski. He straddled his lap, opening his mouth against Leonard’s, and his hands were everywhere. Cradling his face and sliding across his shoulders and down his chest and stomach, until finally he slipped his hand underneath the waistband of Leonard’s boxers and wrapped it around his cock. Leonard gasped into his mouth and felt Jim smile. 

“You like this?” he asked, voice low and a little bit breathless as he stroked him, just slow enough to count as teasing. Leonard was going to reply with something along the lines of  _ do you have to ask? _ but all that came out was, 

“Mhmm.” 

“You might like this even more,” Jim said next, kissing Leonard one last time on the corner of his mouth and sinking down to his knees again. He pushed his boxers out of the way and Leonard was glad he hadn’t sassed Jim after all, because just a second later Jim was leaning down and wrapping his mouth around Leonard’s cock. 

He was even better at this, too. Leonard sank his fingers into Jim’s hair, pulling just a little bit, until Jim moaned and took him further into his mouth. 

Leonard wasn’t even thinking about his knee, at this point. Or about skiing or his vacation or anything except for the sight of Jim on the floor between his legs, mouth full of his cock and the muscles in his back and arms flexing as he bobbed his head up and down and pushed Leonard’s thighs apart with his hands. 

“Shit,” Leonard breathed, felt the heat building low in his stomach. Jim hummed and swallowed around him, his mouth tighter and somehow hotter and Leonard didn’t know if he was going to last much longer. Based on Jim’s enthusiasm, though, he probably knew Leonard was getting close. 

“Shit, I’m--” He threw his head back against the chair, chest heaving with every breath, eyes squeezed shut, and then it all went white. 

The next thing he knew Jim was smiling up at him, arms crossed over Leonard’s lap, his chin propped up on his wrists. His lips were swollen and his eyes were bright and his face was even more flushed, all the way down his neck. Leonard dragged a hand down his face. 

“I feel like  _ I’m _ the one who owes you takeout,” he said quietly. 

Jim laughed, and climbed into Leonard’s lap, and maybe Leonard’s staff was onto something. Maybe he  _ had _ needed a vacation, after all. 


	8. meet-cute in ugly sweaters / T

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _16\. we didn’t read the invitation that said this party was formal so we’re in our ugly christmas sweaters_

Leonard made it about fifteen minutes into the holiday party before he started thinking of excuses to leave. 

_ Nobody told me this party was black tie and I’m wearing a bright red sweater with a teddy bear on it that says BEARY CHRISTMAS _ , while it was actually the truth, just seemed like too stupid of an excuse. He stood by the open bar, taking advantage of the fact that even the hard liquor was free, and tried to come up with a made-up family emergency, because the best thing about having a kid was using your kid to get out of things. 

_ Joanna is sick I gotta go _ . 

That was Leonard’s go-to, usually, but he’d used it so many times that now it was an obvious lie, especially considering the faux-pas he’d already committed. 

Although maybe being a doctor gave him more liberty with medical-emergency excuses.

_ Joanna is in the hospital.  _

No, that would be way too intense. 

Leonard threw back the last of his bourbon and gestured to the bartender for another one. She definitely knew _ exactly _ why Leonard needed another drink and definitely was trying not to let her eyes focus too long on the giant teddy bear on his sweater. 

_ Jocelyn’s car broke down and someone needs to pick up Joanna from dance class.  _

Now that could work.

He started scanning the room, looking for the host, or at least someone he knew who would be a good person to say his goodbyes to. And then he realized that it was 11 pm, and no reasonable children’s dance school would be operating at this hour. 

Leonard sighed. And then, he spotted him. 

Another sucker who’d also thought this was an ugly sweater party. He looked just like Leonard felt, awkward and like he was mentally kicking himself, even as he attempted to socialize while he wove in and out of groups of stylish party guests. He had on a bright blue sweater with a cat wearing a yarmulke and the words HAPPY HANNUKCAT. Leonard immediately felt his pain. 

And then they caught eyes, and Leonard knew that Mr. Happy Hannukcat also felt  _ his _ pain. He gave him a smile that was half-sympathetic and half-relieved, immediately crossing the room to meet him. 

“Thank god,” was the first thing he said, and Leonard was having trouble focusing on his words when he was met with that bright blue sweater and even brighter blue eyes, and a face that was actually really cute now that he didn’t look so damn awkward. 

“I feel like an idiot,” Leonard said, and that earned a laugh, which made him even cuter. “Actually, I was about to try to leave.”

“No, don’t leave!” he immediately cried, eyes going wide with fear. His hand shot out to grab Leonard’s wrist, the one which was holding his bourbon, almost spilling it. “You can’t leave me here alone. Please. We make sense as a pair, alone we look like dorks.”

“Did you just call me a dork and beg me not to leave in the same sentence?” Leonard asked, and the guy still looked afraid for a second, and a little bit desperate, until he saw that Leonard wasn’t actually going anywhere yet. 

He relaxed, giving Leonard a small sort of smile, and looked right into his eyes, and said, 

“Please, stay.”

And with that face, and those eyes, and that very sad, very ridiculous sweater he had on (in the middle of a black tie party), how could Leonard say no?

-

They proceeded to spend the rest of the evening joined at the hip, because whether or not that made the sweaters themselves less embarrassing, it at least made the two of  _ them  _ feel less awkward. And he was right, they  _ did _ make sense as a pair. Maybe too much sense. By the fifth time someone confused them for a couple, they stopped bothering to correct people. 

“So if this is a date, now,” Leonard’s now-date-to-the-party said, after they’d given up on socializing and decided to just keep drinking for free and stand out on the balcony and look at the city. 

It actually was turning into a very date-like situation, now that Leonard thought about it. 

“If this is a date,” he continued, smiling wide and a little bit flushed from the alcohol, “We should probably tell each other our names.”

“McCoy,” Leonard said, “Leonard McCoy.”

His date raised his (almost-empty) glass. 

“Jim Kirk.”

And Leonard held out his hand to shake it, except he was kind of drunk, now, so when Jim took his hand, he may or may not have pulled him forward, and Jim was also kind of drunk, and he may or may not have stepped even closer, and kissed him. 

“Hmm,” Leonard said. 

“Yeah.”

Jim kissed him again, and the two of them seemed to fit together so perfectly, even Jim’s body seemed to be the perfect size and shape to fit into Leonard’s embrace--and there was also that thing where they had basically shown up to this party in coordinating sweaters--that everything started to feel a little bit like fate. If fate wanted Leonard to make out with this stranger who had become his date by coincidence, then who was he to question fate? 

“I think this is the best date I’ve been on all year,” Jim said the next time he separated, taking another sip from his glass. His eyes sparkled a little bit when Leonard wrapped a hand around his waist. He leaned in and said,

“You need to go on better dates,”

and kissed the side of his neck. 

“Mmh. I think I do,” Jim replied, voice low. “Maybe you can take me on another one?”

Leonard kissed his neck again, and then the underside of his jaw. 

“Do I have to dress up?” 

Jim breathed out a laugh. 

“How about you wear whatever you want, as long as it's not that sweater .”

“Deal.”


	9. reunited after 7 years / M

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _85\. we haven’t been friends for years but we both end up at a mutual friend’s holiday party and you apologize for how things went down between us (which I wasn’t expecting in a million years)_
> 
> sorry about the intermission, but here come the new year's eve stories--i don't know if this is a worthy excuse, but i was a little busy last week having romantic new year's eve adventures of my own ;)

“Oh no.” 

Jim immediately turned his back to the rest of the room, facing Gaila. For good measure he brought up his free hand to cover the side of his face. With the other one, he took an irresponsibly large sip from his mulled wine. 

“Oh no  _ what? _ What oh no?”

Gaila was about two drinks deeper than Jim was. Which meant she was in an impossibly good mood, which meant she didn’t realize the actual gravity of the situation when Jim said, 

“Oh no as in I just saw Bo-- _ Leonard.  _ He’s literally in this room. Right now.”

“Bo-Leonard? Who’s Bo-Leonard?”

“Bones. Leonard. The Leonard I called Bones.”

“Oh SHIT,” Gaila said, her mouth open wide like she was about to laugh. Jim immediately covered her mouth with his hand before she made even more noise. He stepped closer, whispering harshly in her ear. 

“I need to get out of here. We need to figure out how to get out of here.”

She looked at him with wide eyes, and then looked over his shoulder, and then back to him, and carefully removed Jim’s hand from her face. 

“Bones as in Bones the guy who completely broke your heart?” she asked, voice lower--thank god.

“And crushed my soul and made me think I’d never love again, yes.” Jim forced the rest of his wine down his throat, gasping a little bit on his next breath. “I wrote poetry about him,” he said, set the glass down on the shelf behind Gaila and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 

“You write poetry?” 

“That’s not the point. The point is we need to get out of here. We need a ruse. We need a backup plan in case he recognizes the back of my head and comes over here.” If Jim was sober he would have realized he was speaking like a crazy person. Or not, because if he was sober he’d be able to speak even faster. 

“That’s not possible, you have a way better haircut than you had in college.”

“Hey,  _ zip it, _ ” Jim hissed, making the gesture with his hand, too. 

Gaila smiled at him, her eyelids a little bit heavy, her cheeks flushed. She pushed her hair back from her face, even though that didn’t seem to do anything to tame the wild red curls of it. Jim saw the sequins on her dress glittering as she moved. If they weren’t best friends he would wonder why the hell she was wasting her time with him at this party. 

Except they were best friends. Which is why the next thing Jim said was, 

“Can you pretend to be my girlfriend again. No wait. My fiancee.”

“Absolutely not,” she said, voice tinted with laughter.

“Come on.”

“We agreed we weren’t going to do stuff like that anymore? Like, we made a whole list? Things We Will Stop Doing Because They Always End With Us Having Sex And That’s Confusing?”

Jim thought for a second. 

“Oh yeah, that  _ is _ what I titled the list.”

She held his hands in her own for just a moment, looking right into his eyes, and Jim wondered why this couldn’t have just worked out. The two of them. He wondered why nothing in his life could have just  _ fucking _ worked out. He sighed. Gaila let go of his hands. 

“How about you just keep pretending to gaze at me lovingly and I’ll keep watch and tell you when he left the room, and then you can make a--”

“Jim?”

It felt like a lightning bolt of energy shot through Jim’s spine just from hearing that voice. From hearing  _ his _ name in  _ that _ voice. 

“ _ Gaila what do I do, _ ” Jim whispered, and the only advice Gaila apparently thought to give was, 

“ _ Don’t have sex with him. _ ”

So Jim turned around to face the man who had broken his pathetic little 21-year-old heart all those years ago, the man who unfortunately had  _ not _ gotten uglier with age, who just  _ had _ to show up to this stupid party and  _ had _ to recognize Jim and  _ had _ to decide to fucking walk up to him and call his name and fucking  _ smile _ when Jim fucking _ turned around _ and the only fucking  _ words _ Jim had left in his idiot,  _ alcohol-steeped _ brain were, 

_ don’t have sex with him. _

He was surprised he didn’t completely choke on the word _ hi _ .  __

-

“That’s bullshit,” Jim said--as if he was in any place to get mad at Bones, when he had, in fact, willingly left the party with him in order to get drinks somewhere else.  _ Somewhere quieter, _ Bones had said, and apparently Jim was still the special kind of stupid that he’d said yes without even hesitating. 

Jim had ordered a club soda at the bar. Bones was holding a glass of vodka in his hand that he had yet to take one sip of. Apparently he hadn’t needed the liquid courage in order to tell Jim he had been in love with him since that night, in college. 

That night when they’d fucked in college. That night right before that  _ morning _ when Bones had smashed his heart into a million little pieces and said, among other things:  _ I’m not gay, you’re my best friend _ , and  _ I’m getting back together with Jocelyn. _

He and Jocelyn got engaged three weeks later. 

Jim didn’t go to the wedding.

“That’s bullshit,” Jim repeated, quietly, to himself. He turned away from Bones, facing the bar, and drank his club soda. 

“It’s not. It’s the truth,” Bones said, and he sounded so desperate already, like he was about to start begging, and Jim wished he could feel some sort of satisfaction from the way the tables had turned. Instead it just made him sad. 

Jim scoffed. 

“Have I ever lied to you?” he asked. Jim looked over at Bones out of the corner of his eye, at the way he leaned towards him, the way he gripped his glass so tight like he was trying to break it. 

He really  _ had _ aged well. It wasn’t fair. Even when he looked like he was two seconds from losing his mind he was still handsome--more handsome than before, actually, since he’d grown into those harsh eyebrows, and that strong nose, and it even looked like he could grow a beard now--and it wasn’t fair. And he was wearing a suit with the first few buttons of his shirt undone and….

God damn it. 

He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring anymore, either.

Jim had to look away so he could find his bitterness again. 

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to call that part where you hooked up with me and then got back together with Jocelyn the next day, but it sure felt like there were some lies involved.”

“It wasn’t the  _ next day _ \--” Bones started, and it was too familiar, the tone in his voice when he immediately got defensive was too fucking familiar. It made something in Jim’s chest ache. Something he had forgotten was still capable of aching. 

Bones must have seen it. Or felt that ache himself. He cleared his throat. 

“I’m sorry,” he said instead. “I’m sorry I did that to you. I knew I was hurting you, even back then, I just--I was afraid of the way you made me feel, okay. I was afraid of being in love with you. With a man.”

“Oh that’s a good one.” Jim breathed out a laugh, shaking his head. He looked down into his club soda and watched the bubbles rise to the top. “That’s a very Hollywood line.”

“It’s not a line. I was afraid of what would happen if we tried to be together, I mean--I had to think about my family--my dad--”

“Because queer people aren’t thinking about their families. Because I never think about my family at all, do I.”

He knew it was mean. Especially considering that he also knew that Bones’ dad had died not long after they graduated. Jim knew it was mean, but he still said it, and for some reason Bones still didn’t give up even when his expression hardened just slightly. 

“I told you I’m sorry,” Bones said. “I’ll tell you again. I’ll keep telling you until you believe me.”

Jim had no idea what compelled him to answer in the way that he did. Nevertheless, he answered, 

“I’ve got time.”

-

Jim almost did it. He almost did the  _ one _ thing Gaila had told him not to do. And then he was standing on the curb outside of the bar underneath a flickering yellow streetlight and he was kissing Bones for the first time in seven years and it felt so good that he almost forgot all of the reasons it was supposed to feel bad.

Except Bones was cradling Jim’s face in his hands and pressing their mouths together again and again like he couldn’t decide on the right angle and it was desperate and gentle and perfect like he’d always remembered their first time, even though Jim realized, now, that their first time hadn’t been like this.

Their first time had been rushed and awkward, and Jim’s hands had been shaking so much that he couldn’t get his belt undone, and he could hardly look Bones in the eye even though he’d spent--what,  _ months? _ \--dreaming about that exact scenario? It hadn’t been good. If it had been anyone else but Bones, he would have written it off as just weird, bad sex. Instead Jim spent years of his life hung up on one single night, layering it with all this romance and love that hadn’t been there to begin with.

All of this came to Jim as soon as Bones whispered into his neck,  _ come home with me _ , and all of a sudden Jim was sick. And angry. 

At Bones. At Himself. He didn’t even know.

“No,” he said, and Bones slowly lifted his head. He let go of Jim and stepped back once he saw the look on his face. 

“I don’t want to be another experiment for you.”

“That’s not what this is to me.”

“I’m not—“ Jim backed away from him even further, wrapping his arms around himself. “I’m not gonna have sex with you just so you can figure yourself out. I won’t do that again.”

He could see that Bones wanted to argue, he could see the subtle cues in his expression, in his posture, and he was ready to hear him snap back, only he didn’t.

He looked sad, for a moment, or maybe just disappointed, underneath the light that flicked on and off and on and off. And then he just nodded and said,

“Okay.”

Jim walked home in the cold. Alone. And the fireworks going off in the distance only bothered him as much as that fucking streetlight. 

-

Jim’s phone rang a few days later, in the middle of the night. Luckily for the caller, he wasn’t sleeping anyway. He hadn’t really been sleeping at all since New Year’s Eve.

“This is Jim Kirk,” he said sleepily. He pushed himself up against his headboard and rubbed his eyes.

“Hey. It’s me.”

If Jim was more awake he would have been able to get appropriately mad. But it came out as more of a whine when he asked, 

“How the hell did you get my number?”

“I asked around,” Bones said, with a little hesitation in his voice. Jim could hear the sound of shifting bedsheets, too, from the other end of the call. He felt a strange little pull at his heart to know that they were both in the same position, sleepless, awkward, and on the phone with each other despite all of the reasons Bones shouldn’t have called, and all of the reasons Jim shouldn’t have picked up. 

“Can’t sleep?”

“Nope.”

“Me neither.”

“I want to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“Anything, I just--I want you in my life. Even if I can never get you to kiss me again.”

“Jesus.” Jim let out a long breath. Even though he was still angry and the thought of Bones still tied his stomach in knots, his stupid Hollywood lines managed to get straight to his heart every time. “Were you like this in college?”

“I kinda was. With Jocelyn. It was one of the things that ended up annoying her.”

“Well.” Jim swallowed hard, and already hated himself for what he was going to say next, for continuing to encourage Bones even though he had no idea if he was even  _ planning _ on giving him a chance. “Her loss, then.”

-

Maybe it was because Jim didn’t actually want to _ see  _ Bones. Or maybe he was just afraid of what would happen the next time he did. Either way they sort of made a habit of phone calls. Not every night, but often enough. A couple times a week. Three days in a row, once. Always late at night, in the beginning, and then whenever they felt like it. While Jim was grocery shopping, while one or both of them rode the bus home in the evenings, when Bones was on break after a long surgery, exhausted and, for some reason, asking Jim questions in between sips of his hospital coffee.

They had a lot to catch up on, obviously. But even once they’d gotten each other up to speed about the last seven years of each other’s lives, they still talked. Jim didn’t realize when his stomach had stopped turning at the sound of his voice, and when that little spike of panic disappeared when he saw Bones’ number (and later--his name) on caller ID.

-

It was a complete slip-up when Jim finally told Gaila about it. 

He was expecting outrage, more than anything, especially because she was sober for this conversation. Instead she just paused, looked at him thoughtfully, her chin resting on her hand, and asked,

“Is that a good idea?”

Jim shifted in his chair awkwardly. “Is it?”

“No, I’m seriously asking. I never met him, you know, except for a few seconds of eye contact at that New Year’s party before he whisked you away.”

“He did not  _ whisk me away _ .”

Gaila raised an eyebrow at him, pausing with her hand raised to take another sip of her coffee. 

Okay, Bones had shown up to the party and Jim had left, rather abruptly, _ with _ Bones, so maybe that might have qualified as Jim being whisked away. But still. 

“Well do you forgive him? Because I’m not going to support this if it’s another one of your self-harm sex schemes.”

Jim was tempted to respond that he did not have  _ self-harm sex schemes _ , whatever the fuck  _ that _ meant, except when he thought about all the people he’d been involved with, especially right after the whole Bones thing happened, maybe Gaila was right again. He conceded and drank his mocha. 

“Let’s try it this way: does talking to him make you feel good? Or does it just feed that little voice inside you that tells you you’ll never love or be loved again?”

Jim sighed and rubbed his eyes. 

“The first time I was just mad, but I kept answering. It makes me feel good now, I guess. It makes me  _ want _ to forgive him. Does that make me a pushover?”

“No,” Gaila replied, and she had that thoughtful look on her face again. “I think that makes you emotionally mature. I remember you said you were afraid that if he ever came back you’d turn into the same lovesick fool you were back in college, but you didn’t. You’re really thinking about things this time.”

“I’m thinking about things.” Jim allowed himself a little satisfied smile. “Wait, so what does that mean.”

“It means you should stop torturing him and give him a shot. Meet him in person again. But don’t have sex with him.”

“Why not?”

“Just don’t. It’s not a good idea.”

-

Jim tapped his foot up and down, his leg shaking underneath the table. When he’d planned all of this out, it seemed like a good idea. Meeting Bones, face to face, in the daytime--at the cafe he and Gaila always went to so he’d feel like he has the upper hand. Now he was here and it seemed like maybe this whole thing was a mistake. 

Talking on the phone was easier, because he couldn’t see Bones. It was almost like talking to someone else, someone new, but with the added benefit that Bones understood his sense of humor already and understood what he was trying to say when he had trouble completing his thoughts in the middle of the night. There was no real reminder of who they used to be, of  _ how _ they used to be, no familiar, handsome, grown-up Bones looking him right in the eye and making him feel seven years younger. 

Unfortunately, Bones showed up before Jim could finish planning his escape. And he started unraveling his scarf from around his neck and looking around the cafe with wide, unsure eyes, and he was nervous too, clearly. 

And he saw Jim, and he smiled. 

Jim wished he was still nervous after they made eye contact. He even would have taken the anxious, angry stomachaches again. Instead he felt calm, and he felt himself smiling back, and he had no choice but to accept the fact that he had forgiven Bones. 

-

They stayed at their little table until it was appropriate for the baristas to start glaring at them, and then they stayed even longer. Until the sun started to set and the last sip of Jim’s latte was cold. Until Bones looked at him, leaning forward with both elbows on the table, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and asked, 

“Will you go on a date with me?”

Jim bit into his lower lip to stop himself from asking  _ isn’t this a date already? _

Because even if it was (which it was, basically), that would have given Bones way too much satisfaction. 

“When?” he asked instead. 

Bones shrugged.

“Right now.”

“Right now?”

“I have a feeling we’re gonna get kicked out of here soon.”

Jim swept his gaze across the rest of the cafe. There was only a handful of other customers left, who were either packing up now or still absorbed in their reading or writing. He thought about leaving, parting ways with Bones, and going home alone, and he thought about leaving  _ with _ Bones. 

“Why should I go on a date with you?” Jim asked, even though he already knew that he wanted to.

“Because you still feel something for me, or because you want to, or because you’re clearly having fun watching me beg,” Bones said. “Take your pick. If any of those are true.”

Jim breathed out a laugh through his nose. He started putting his coat on, because all of those things were true, actually, but  _ especially  _ the part about enjoying watching Bones beg. 

Bones followed him outside, buttoning his coat while they stood on the sidewalk. 

“How about because I ruined your New Year’s? I think that deserves an apology date.”

“You didn’t ruin my New Year’s.”

Bones looked up from his coat buttons. He raised an eyebrow at Jim. 

“Didn’t I?”

Jim shook his head no. That little smile was back at the corner of Bones’ mouth and he gave up on buttoning his coat or wrapping his scarf around his neck and took a step closer. 

“So will you go on a date with me?”

“Yes,” Jim said plainly and Bones squinted at him, even as his entire mouth curved into a smile--a grin, almost. 

“Why?” he asked. Jim rolled his eyes, shoving his hands into his pockets--and he wanted to look away, he really did, to stare into traffic or acknowledge that half of the cafe staff was probably watching them through the windows, except he’d just made Bones smile and nothing could have made him look away from that, not even the blood rushing to his cheeks or the feeling of being young and dumb and 21 again, heart racing at the idea of a date with Bones. 

“Because I still have feelings for you,” he said, and Bones was closer. Bones was kissing him, pulling their bodies together with a hand on Jim’s lower back. 

“--and because I want to,” he breathed, in between every press of their mouths. His hand was pulling at the back of Bones’ neck, keeping him as close as possible, and Bones just sighed and laughed and smiled into the kiss and this--this was better than that night they’d spent together in college. Better than that devastating New Year’s kiss. Better than every thought and every fantasy he’d had of kissing Bones. This was them, starting over, starting again, starting from zero, and picking up where they’d left off, all at once. 

“And,” Jim started, pulling back from the next kiss so he could lean forward instead, pressing their cheeks together to whisper into Bones’ ear, struggling to hold back another laugh, “I really,  _ really _ like watching you beg.”


	10. new year's kiss / T

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello hello
> 
> _21\. we’re arguing when the ball drops on new year’s eve, and decide to kiss and shit i don’t think i hate you anymore_  
> 

“No, no, no!” he said, “you don’t even know what you’re talking about,” and slapped his hand against the surface of the bar for good measure. He seemed to be enjoying this--whatever this was--something of an argument. Even though it’d started like a seduction. 

It’d started, actually, with an incredibly hot blond guy in a tight black suit walking up to Leonard and sitting on the barstool next to him and introducing himself innocently, but with the most obvious set of bedroom eyes Leonard had ever seen. And then by fate or bad luck or who knows what, introductions led to talking about jobs which led to talking about this guy--Jim--and  _ his _ job, which led to talking about new technology because he was an engineer, which led to talking about societal concerns in the face of new technology, which led to an argument. 

“You can’t just develop something new and decide _ not _ to use it. Nobody does that.” Jim was eagerly shooting down everything Leonard said, and somehow had a smile on his face the entire time. A smile which was as annoying as it was attractive.

“Well they damn well ought to start.”

Jim just laughed at him, one single bark of laughter, and looked down into his glass. 

“If we’re spending all this time thinking about how far technology can go, shouldn’t we think about the consequences, too?” Leonard asked. 

“Engineers think about the consequences. Trust me, I am one.”

“Only after they’ve already started happening.”

“So, what, you want us to invent something, never test it, never send it to market, and move on to the next thing?”

“Well it wouldn’t hurt to wait a damn minute before sending every shiny thing you come up with to market.”

“Do you even know what you’re talking about? Aren’t you a surgeon? What, do you still pour sugar into your patients’ wounds?”

“Jesus christ.”

Jim raised his head, a little glint in his eye, the corner of his mouth still quirked up. Like he’d just won, or something.

“Calling on the lord for help? Did I just poke too many holes in your argument, Doctor?” he asked teasingly, and then before Leonard could respond, leaned over the bar and called to the bartender, “Can I get two glasses of champagne?”

“Poked too many holes in my damn nerves, that’s what you did,” Leonard griped, but he still accepted the glass of champagne from the bartender, because, well...

“You know, you’re kind of a technophobe. I feel like medical professionals aren’t supposed to be technophobes.”

“Damn right I’m a technophobe. It’s y’all’s fault for making scary shit.”

Jim breathed out a laugh through his nose, shook his head a little bit as he smiled at Leonard over his shoulder. Leonard just rolled his eyes, and he was about to go into an example of the aforementioned scary shit, like his most recent air travel experience where instead of a human being checking his ticket, he’d been instructed to stand in front of a computer for ticket check via _ facial recognition _ \--which he still hadn’t recovered from--except he was interrupted by the chorus of the entire party starting to count backwards from 10. 

His instincts made him join in, and apparently so did Jim’s, and they realized too late what they’d gotten themselves into and then they were looking into each other’s eyes as they got closer to  _ 3 2 1 0 and Happy New Year _ and then what else were they supposed to do? Jim had just bought him a glass of champagne. So what if he was an annoyingly idealistic, tech-obsessed, wide-eyed, post-modern, son of a--

Jim pulled him forward with his hand wrapped gently around the lapel of Leonard’s jacket, and kissed him. Leonard knew that it was just the cheers of the party and the drum of the music and the sounds of those stupid champagne-poppers going off all around them, but there was something about the kiss that felt more than just convenient. There was something that felt--as cheesy as it was--like fireworks. Electric, maybe. Shiny and new. 

And Jim’s smile was a hell of a lot less annoying when Leonard was feeling it against his lips, rather than seeing it. 

Leonard decided he could maybe afford to be less of a technophobe. It just so happened that he knew someone who could teach him how, and that someone still held onto his lapel and still pressed their mouths together long after the cheering started to die down. 


End file.
